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Daddy Dearest ....(103k)    by Lara Stanford

SUDDENLY IT OCCURRED TO ME that Daddy was observing me very closely-but for what? I didn't know, and yet a certain uneasiness was beginning to move through me. I thought of my new womanhood, and how it made me vulnerable in a way I'd never been vulnerable before.

But I was with my own father, my Daddy Dearest-it was unthinkable that he would take advantage of me, that he had anything but the most innocent sort of celebration in mind ... then why did he look at me that way?

"Why don't you come sit on my lap, Lara?" he said in a coaxing tone.

Suddenly I was afraid. And yet I also craved his warmth-he was so handsome, so strong, so seemingly gentle. He held his hand out toward me. I felt that if I took his hand, anything might happen. But if I didn't, then what? Would he become angry? Would it mean the end of this wonderful evening, of his attention toward me?

It seemed that all of a sudden I knew too much, more than I wanted to know. As if my woman's intuition started from nowhere and came to full bloom in a matter of minutes-Daddy Dearest was taking a most un-fatherly pleasure from having me on his lap! I knew then, that he intended to seduce me and that I would let him. After all, how could I possibly stop him ... he was my ... DADDY DEAREST

CHAPTER ONE

Daddy was a sadist, but I loved him. I also hated his guts, but let's take one thing at a time. And, just to be logical, let's begin at the end.

The last time I saw Daddy, he lay very still and didn't say a word. This was not surprising, since he was dead. Still, dead or otherwise, I had a hard time believing he would just lie there without abusing me in some way-either scolding me for the way I was dressed, or taking me to task for some imagined offense, or, worse yet, forcing me into one final incestuous act.

But no, Daddy was actually kaput, beyond cruelty. It must have frustrated him no end! I was terrifically relieved, but also grief-stricken. It's funny how much you get to love someone who has done nothing but make your life miserable from day one. Well, I guess I'll never really sort out the contradictory feelings I have about Daddy. Here I was, viewing his corpse, weeping-but at the same time, I had an almost irresistible urge to yank out all his eyelashes, lash by lash, first one eye, then the other.

The scene of my last meeting with Daddy was the viewing room of the Ashes to Ashes Funeral Home in New York. It was there that my lawyer, my shrink, and I had been summoned when the news of Daddy's death broke over the airwaves. Millions were mourning for Drew Stanford-all the horny housewives who remembered him as a matinee idol, a handsome, dashing hero who combined the macho energy of Gable with the teddy-bear warmth of William Powell. But, for all his former fame, his death was a lonely one. It didn't even fill the funeral home parking lot. It seemed sad somehow that a man whose films brought pleasure to millions-and whose body brought pleasure to thousands, at least-should have no grander recognition at the end than the attention of a yawning undertaker, the hand-rubbing eagerness of the family lawyer, and the anxieties of my shrink, who feared that Daddy's death might send me off the deep end once and for all. Daddy himself no longer mattered. Well, as they say in Latin, Sic transit gloria mundi, which, loosely translated, means Better a Has Been Than a Never-Was.

Anyway, there we were at the funeral home. I wore a new dress for the occasion, and I must say I looked pretty foxy. Don't get me wrong-I'm not vain, and I certainly don't think glamor has any place in the solemn precincts of death, but after all, I've got my own career to worry about, and I thought there might be photographers around. But Daddy was such a has-been that not even the New York Post showed up. Oh well. So I just stood around making small talk with the embalmer until the time came for the Big Question: Did I want to see the body?

I said yes, of course. The opportunity to have some time alone with Daddy when he couldn't hit back was something I just couldn't pass up. So the undertaker led me to the viewing room, nodding all the time like the obliging moron he was. He opened the door for me and then politely withdrew, leaving me alone for the one-sided interview with my Daddy, my deflowerer, my jailor, and the perverted love of my life.

I moved close to the coffin and looked down at him. Even in death he was handsome, there was no denying it. I understood why the housewives always stained the theater seats when they saw his movies. His gray hair was still wavy and thick, regal above his broad forehead. His eyelids had been pulled down like window shades, but I well-remembered the big gray eyes beneath them-they were the most expressive eyes I'd ever seen. They could register the fiercest desire, the most probing intellect, and, on rare occasions, even gentleness. The sculpted nose was in repose. The mouth-sensual, sensuous, and scintillating-was locked in a final manly smirk. The dimpled chin, which suggested character and courage, and upon which thousands of women perched in fantasy, held just a hint of five o'clock shadow. Even in death, Daddy was so virile as to require two shaves a day.

I watched his face for some moments, and then my eyes wandered southward over the map of his body. I knew his body too well, far better than a daughter is supposed to know her daddy's body. That hadn't been my idea-at the beginning, at least-but life plays strange tricks. As a matter-of-fact, life has a sick sense of humor. But back to Daddy's body. His neck was still firm-surgery had taken care of the Turkey-esque wattles that age often hangs on the throats of once-handsome men. The shoulders, broad and full in the burial tuxedo, filled the coffin from side to side. The chest appeared still sound, the gut was still appealingly flat. Letting eyes wander down the taper of his torso, I glanced quickly at the slight bulge of his you-know-what and then checked out his legs. Slim, strong, tall-if you didn't know he was dead, you might have thought he was still very much alive.

Yes, he was still handsome, and, now that I thought of it, the fact surprised me. The thing is, Daddy had lived a thoroughly corrupt, and corrupting, life. Morally, emotionally, his life had been poisoned. He had broken every taboo-and wasn't I the living evidence of that! He had subjected his body to every excess, every vice, every corrosive habit and experiment-and yet he remained beautiful. His beauty reminded me of the story of Dorian Gray. A vain young man has his portrait painted. Wanting more than anything to preserve his appearance, he manages to have all the ravages of age and dissipation transferred to the painting. The man himself remains young and clean, but the picture becomes ugly, gnarled, evil incarnate. And finally, the portrait destroys the man....

But Daddy had had no portrait. I was the closest he came. His vices, perversions, aberrations, found their mark in me. Not that I showed the scars physically, any more than he did. No, I had my outward beauty, my charm, my poise. But inside-yecch! I was a mess and I knew it. I was almost proud of it. I cherished my pain the way a nine-year old cherishes a scab. But still, the pain was real, and it hurt, and I knew who was to blame for all my agony-that stiff there in the coffin, that handsome villain!

I stared down at him again, and God, how I loathed him at that moment! (Even though, at the same time, I still loved him desperately, pathetically, still craved his grudging approval, would still have gotten down on all fours and brought him his slippers in my mouth.) He had always been my Daddy Dearest, the giver of light, the dispenser of joy as well as pain. But, more than anything else, he'd hurt me, and now he'd up and died before I could get even. That's what really hurt. When I was a kid and he was in his prime-when he was the powerful one and I was helpless-he'd always had his way. But now, when I was in the full flush of my vindictive womanhood and he was entering his dotage-when I could have really turned the tables on him and made him miserable-he spoiled my fun by croaking. Just when I was starting to win, he took his bat and ball and went home. I was thwarted in my revenge.

Still, I yearned to make some token gesture, to get my last licks in, to have the last laugh. I stared down at his body and then an inspired idea came to me. The idea was sick even by my family's standards, and that was part of its appeal....

I looked back over my shoulder at the door of the viewing room. The door had no lock on it, but I knew that no one would dare disturb the sacred contemplation of a grieving daughter. I was safe.

I turned back toward the coffin and leaned over it. I felt a tingle of delight at my planned revenge, and a touch of erotic anticipation at the sheer perverseness of my intention.

My hands hovered over Daddy's belt. I could hardly keep my fingers from shaking. I had to remind myself that Daddy was indeed dead and couldn't retaliate. I reached down and undid the buckle.

Then I grabbed the pull of his zipper. My hands were sweating and I could hardly hold the slick metal.

I squeezed harder and slowly lowered his fly. It was so quiet that I could hear each click of the zipper sliding open another notch. When the fly was open all the way, I could see that Daddy's belly was covered with the neatly arranged tails of his white shirt.

I parted the tails and was shocked to find that the undertaker hadn't bothered to put Daddy's underwear on. Jesus Christ, I thought. A five thousand dollar embalming job, and they won't even spring for a pair of jockey shorts! What I saw, where I expected to see Daddy's briefs, was Daddy. Daddy's pubic hair still had its salt-and-pepper curl. His you-know-what was in its flaccid state, but there was something in its posture that suggested its flaccidness-even in death-was only very temporary. His scrotum-that heavy bundle he'd carried through life as cheerfully as a boy scout totes his pack-was crinkled and somewhat pale. But then, it'd been tucked away for nearly twenty-four hours, and that had to be some sort of record.

I felt a strange clinical detachment examining Daddy's genitalia. Those organs had, to a large degree, shaped my life, and yet, what could really be said about them? A penis of such and such dimensions, testicles of so much urgency-they were impressive for what they were, but they defied poetry.

But poetry, I reminded myself, was not my intention. My purpose was revenge. I wanted to strike one last blow that would, to some degree at least, make up for everything I'd suffered at his hands. I steeled myself and reached inside his pants....

I would have preferred not to touch his penis at all, having already spent much more time with it than my shrink thought was good for me, but I couldn't very well avoid it. I picked it up and dropped it aside. It felt weird. Rigor mortis had given it the spongy consistency of a half-defrosted frankfurter. Death had thickened the skin, and you could imagine a crunch when you took the first bite. I was relieved when I dropped the tube and burrowed toward the balls.

They were the target, and fittingly so! Those insistent spheroids were the driving force behind Daddy's cruelty, and I intended to settle the score with them once and for all. I grabbed the flesh of the sack, which had the ripply texture of chicken skin. Gathering the folds together with my sharp nails, I made sure I had the testes securely in the palm of my hand....And then I squeezed. I squeezed as hard as I could, and for as long as I could, until my hand began to cramp. I was in ecstasy. I took great satisfaction from knowing that, if Daddy had been alive, it would have hurt like hell. I squeezed, and then I tugged. The testicles almost came loose from their moorings. I looked down at Daddy's face and imagined he was wincing.

Finally I let go of his gonads and closed up his pants. I felt an enormous relief, as if I'd finally got to the bottom of my excruciating love-hate relationship with him. It was then, in my relief, that the tears really came. I cried and cried and cried, and when I was done, I kissed Daddy tenderly on the brow. When I turned to leave the viewing room, I honestly felt that accounts had been settled, that the ledger was closed.

But alas, the feeling did not last. Shortly after the funeral, I realized how puny my revenge had been. He had ruined my whole life, and what had I done? Given his nuts a little squeeze that he couldn't feel anyway. What kind of revenge was that?

No, I had to do something more public, something more vindictive. I had to do something that would exploit the fact that Daddy could no longer strike back, could no longer testify, could no longer plead his own case....

It was then that I decided to write this book.

CHAPTER TWO

My father had not always been called Drew Stanford. Like all big Hollywood stars, he'd made a name change relatively early in life, and he'd done everything he could to erase all traces of his former identity.

He was ashamed of who he really was, and I can't blame him. In a word, his family was Scum. That was their name, I mean. His parents were Mr. and Mrs. Scum. He was born as Harry Scum. With a name like that, it's not difficult to understand the allure of Hollywood for him-a magical place where names and identities changed with each new film, where you could be a good guy one month and a dashing villain the next. Daddy was a born fake, and his early heritage as a Scum helped to give that quality a bitter edge.

But it was not simply the name of Scum that made Daddy's childhood so miserable. He hated his parents' guts. His father, Jeremiah Scum, seems to have been a certifiable lunatic, though not without charm. Jeremiah-Scum was dirt poor, yet always entertained notions of becoming filthy rich. One day he left the family hovel in Kansas to prospect for gold in New Jersey. Friends protested, informing Jeremiah that there was no gold in New Jersey. The elder Scum replied that that had never been proven to his satisfaction. No one thought there was gold in California, he reasoned, until it had been found. So off he went to the suburbs of Newark, the only prospector, but not the only fool, that the Garden State has ever known.

Jeremiah Scum's departure left the Scum household in a sorry state. There was thirty-seven cents in a cracked cookie jar in a splintery cupboard. Jeremiah's wife, Clara, had never done a day's work in her life. She was a prima donna, though at two-hundred forty pounds, she didn't look the part. But all she had done for the past eight years was dote on her first and only child-little Harry Scum, a.k.a. Drew Stanford. In other words, my father was a spoiled brat from the word go.

Now, it's hard to be a spoiled brat on thirty-seven cents, but my father managed it. He insisted that his mother take in laundry. When that failed to bring in enough money to keep him in sailor outfits, he started dropping hints that maybe she should walk the streets. His mother, though secretly a nymphomaniac, had had a very strict upbringing, and at first resented her son's veiled suggestions that she become a prostitute. But finally maternal obligation overcame personal scruple, and Clara Scum became a whore. At first, little Harry Scum couldn't have been more pleased. He had plenty of money for candy and sailor suits. He had time alone in the evenings to masturbate and to torture small animals he found in the neighborhood.

There was, however, one problem-a problem which resulted in the undying hatred of my father for his mother. Clara Scum could simply not raise enough money to give my father voice lessons. My father's first ambition, you see, was to be an opera star. He wanted to sing the female roles, and you can draw whatever conclusions you like from that. He wanted to wear the gowns, to break glass, with his high notes. But voice lessons were simply outside the reach of the Scum budget, and little Harry never stopped resenting this.

As the lad grew older, he was more able to contribute to household expenses-but he chose not to do it. He felt that any sort of labor was demeaning, though he heartily recommended it for other people. Instead of working, Harry Scum became a dreamer, a loner, something of an eccentric. He also became a terrifically good-looking adolescent. Acne passed him by without so much as a blemish. Though he was far too lazy to exercise, his chest and limbs filled out to manly proportions. And, speaking of filling out, puberty did wonders for his you-know-what's-is. The length of his member seemed to advance along with his age-an inch for every year. Well, maybe I'm exaggerating somewhat, but that's what Hollywood myths are made of.

In any case, by the time my father was twenty, he had all the raw material necessary for making it in the film business-he was good-looking, ambitious, and utterly devoid of a moral sense. In addition, there was nothing holding him in Kansas. His mother was too worn out by now to turn more than a couple of tricks a night, and that was hardly enough to keep the hale young man in beer. So Harry Scum stuck his thumb out and hitched a ride to California.

To understand my father's meteoric rise, you've got to know a little about what Hollywood was like in the 1930s. It was fantasyland. The rest of the country was in the grips of the Great Depression, but Hollywood was booming. The recent invention of talkies had given the industry a huge shot in the arm. A single successful picture could make an actor a star, and stardom carried with it dizzying wealth-all the more dizzying for its suddenness. The Hollywood moguls carried to a grandly grotesque extreme all the foibles of the nouveau riche. They built vast ornate houses that were monuments to personal vanity. They threw parties, the cost of which might have fed the state of Arkansas for a month. They partook of every excess, from drinking to debauchery and back again. Life was fast, cheap, and licentious-it was the perfect place for someone like Daddy.

Though of course he wouldn't have gotten far with a name like Harry Scum, and long before he'd crossed the border into California, he'd picked out the moniker Drew Stanford. He liked the virile sound of it. It had aristocratic connotations that belied his peasant background. But no matter how many people knew and worshipped him as Stanford, in a deeper sense he was always Scum.

Daddy's arrival in California caused no stir whatsoever. He was simply one more young hopeful, another pretty face among the thousands. All but a tiny fraction of these hopefuls would fail, would be faced with the horrifying necessity of limping home a never-was. But some few would make it, either by luck, persistence, or maybe even by talent. In my father's case, success was assured by sheer ruthlessness.

In keeping with Daddy's promiscuous nature, he soon realized that, besides money and power, what made Hollywood tick was sex. This was not a wholly original perception on Daddy's part, but he defined and exploited the principle as no one had ever done. He had a sure sense of just what to do with whom. He drew up a hierarchy of sexual roles, and then drifted through the pattern. But this is too abstract-let me spell out just what Daddy did.

The first step in making it in Hollywood is getting invited to parties. With my father's looks, charm, and wardrobe (he'd rifled his mama's life savings before splitting), he had little trouble getting a foot in certain desirable doors. When he couldn't get an invitation, he crashed the gate. He had chutzpah. He was occasionally thrown out, but he bounced back in. In any case, he did his share of mingling.

Now, one of my father's most important insights was that, in sex, as in almost anything, you have to start at the bottom. What this meant in practice, was that Daddy began his social climbing by letting his firm young body be used by certain perverse but powerful older men. Daddy's pretty buttocks separated him from the other pretty faces. Daddy always claimed not to be bisexual, and that might have been true, in terms of tastes. But there's no question that, early in life, he had been at the receiving end of many an unnatural act. He parted his cheeks for several producers, a smattering of directors, and assorted studio execs. Long before the public at large had even seen Drew Stanford's face, the other end of him had begun to get his career moving.

But my father's stint as a catamite was relatively brief. Barely had his anal sphincter begun to show signs of wear and tear, when he climbed to the next step of the sexual ladder. Now he was beginning to tumble the wives of the very men he had serviced just weeks before! In the curious pecking order that Hollywood had evolved, this seemed a natural development. By sleeping with the wives of the wealthy and powerful, one approached near equality. True, the husbands still controlled the bank accounts, still enjoyed the prestige of a talked-about alliance, but shtupping the wives afforded some points of contact. Aside from anything else, the husbands tended to be grateful that some young stud was assisting them in the nearly impossible task of keeping the women sated. Further, if the stud gave satisfaction-as Drew Stanford, in his younger day at least, always did-the woman, in gratitude, would be inclined to promote the young man's career, to drop a kind word here and there.

So then, my father pursued success with both barrels, as it were. His rectum was open to the moguls, his member was ready for the dowagers, and he was invited to more and more parties. He was given gifts. His name came up in conversations. He was on the way.

But the final, and most perverse, step in the sexual hierarchy of Hollywood is marriage, and it took my father nearly a year to reach that dubious plateau. A Hollywood marriage, you see, is a very complicated thing to arrange. It abounds in paradoxes. A lackluster marriage is worse than useless-it's destructive; it taints one's entire life with the crushing label "small-time." You've got to marry someone at least potentially big. Of course, it's even better to marry someone already big, but why should someone already big marry someone who only might be big? And what if two potentially big people marry, and one of them fizzles out? It's a dilemma. My father's position was all the more difficult because he was decidedly not yet big. He'd had a couple of small roles, arranged for him by appreciative directors' wives. His penis had been used as a stunt man in a film about horses. Other than that, his film career was zilch.

Still, he was determined to make a really impressive match. The woman he set his sights on was none other than Selma Lucre, a star in her own right, and, more important, the daughter of one of the most powerful producers in Tinseltown. It was fortunate for Selma that her father was a biggie, because Selma couldn't act worth diddle. Her emotional repertoire consisted of three poses-she could look to the right, look to the left, or look straight ahead. She could also be photographed from behind, and certain critics thought this her most advantageous angle. Still, with the publicity machinery behind her, and with her father arranging good scripts and stellar supporting casts behind her, Selma was the hottest thing going.

And Selma apparently had the hots for Daddy. I've seen photos of him from those early days, and I must admit he was a pretty tempting package of goods. He had thick, gorgeously wavy black hair. His forehead was broad and his eyes twinkled with a mischief that only later became downright evil. His mouth was sensuous and his chin was strong. He had broad shoulders, a hefty chest, and a stomach as flat as a washboard. Continuing further south, he had equipment that kept Selma smiling.

Selma's father, Sidney Lucre, however, was not smiling. He had not worked his fingers to the bone, made fifty million dollars, established the biggest studio in Hollywood, and made his essentially talent-less daughter a star, only to have her piss it away on a suave gigolo of the likes of Daddy. Sidney Lucre was perhaps the first man truly to see into the depths of my father's soul. What he saw, was that there were no depths! You looked beneath Daddy's surface, and all you saw was more surface. If you looked a little harder, you saw right out the other side!

Papa Lucre, however, was unable to shake his willful daughter's obsession with the gorgeous young man. Beauty's only skin deep, but Drew Stanford had gotten under her skin and was beginning to affect her mucous membranes. He had brought her to her first orgasm, followed, in quick succession, by her second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth. She wasn't about to let go of that simply because Daddy was a nobody. On Daddy's side, the marriage was purely a matter of convenience; on Selma's side, however, it was a question of concupiscence. She simply could not get enough of what Daddy had. Papa Lucre watched in dismay-through a spyglass-as my Daddy pleasured his daughter in the swimming pool, in the hammock next to the swimming pool, among the trees behind the hammock next to the swimming pool, and against the wall of the cabana at the far side of the trees beside the hammock next to the swimming pool.

To Papa Lucre's well-trained eye, the two seemed to be very much in love, and he realized it would be futile to try and break up the alliance. Still, he was unresigned to having his Selma marry a nobody. The only solution, therefore, was to make Daddy into a somebody. Daddy, of course, knew all along that that's how it would turn out. He may have been a shithead, but he was smooth.

The marriage of Drew Stanford to Selma Lucre was one of the greatest events of the Hollywood season of fall, 1934. Everyone who was anybody was there. By conservative estimate, the affair set Papa Lucre back a cool hundred thou. But it was worth every penny. The guests were regaled by the music of Tommy Dorsey. Champagne was consumed in Neronian abundance. A camera crew was on hand, filming segments of the goings-on for use later in various orgy scenes. (Papa Lucre believed in cutting production costs wherever possible.)

Selma was resplendent in a Parisian gown of finest lace. The color was virginal white, a choice which elicited amused chuckles from two or three hundred of the men present. Her blonde hair was piled on top of her head in a manner so fanciful as to challenge the height and ornateness of the wedding cake itself. She was a bride in the grand manner, right down to the grace with which she danced the first waltz with her husband, and was later found passed out drunk in the bushes.

The bride, however, was upstaged by the groom. Drew Stanford was absolutely stunning in his formal cutaway. His twinkling eyes captivated the ladies, several of whom were later found masturbating in the cabana. There was something masterful in his bearing that night, as if he'd instantly come to full maturity. He'd scored and he knew it. His arrogance, which had always lain just beneath the skin, was now external, proudly visible to anyone who dared look. Daddy had made the magisterial leap from gigolo to star-to-be.

His haughtiness, it might seem, was premature after all, this was only his wedding night. But Daddy had a flair for optimism, an uncanny sense of opportunism. He knew he was launched, and that knowledge was confirmed when it came time to open the wedding gifts. There was silver galore, along with the usual assortment of blenders, toasters, and Tupperware. But the most exciting gift was saved for last-it was a simple white envelope, inscribed in Papa Lucre's sloppy but authoritative hand.

The crowd was hushed as Daddy opened the envelope. With a talent for the dramatic gesture, Daddy tossed the wrapper into the pool and then read aloud the contents. The paper was a gift certificate. It said simply: To the order of the bearer-One Glorious Career.

My Daddy, the son of a bitch, was launched.

CHAPTER THREE

If we talk about Daddy's career and marriage over the next couple of years, it's strictly a question of good news-bad news. The career boomed, the marriage was the pits. That was fine with Daddy, of course. The only way Daddy could've been happily married was if he was married to himself.

In any case, Daddy skyrocketed to fame. Since he and Selma had been banging like bunnies for months, Daddy saw no reason for a honeymoon, and he started in on the shooting of his first starring role the day after the marriage. Papa Lucre, in order not to have his son-in-law look like a schnook, had handpicked the script and spent plenty of money on the production. It had to succeed, and it did.

The movie, for those of you who don't remember it, was called Just a Stone's Throw from Purgatory. In it, my father played an upstanding young frontiersman who turns violent when his beautiful wife and four children are carried off to the Arctic by a renegade band of crazed Eskimos. The scenery was beautiful. The movie was shot, of course, in black and white, and all that snow proved a perfect backdrop for Daddy's black hair. Despite its rather ludicrous premise, the movie fired the imaginations of millions of Americans, and Daddy's reputation was instantly assured.

However, Daddy was concerned about being pegged as a certain type of actor, being limited to certain kinds of roles. He did not want to be known simply as a handsome guy who took inordinate revenge on renegade Eskimos. Accordingly, he made sure that his second role was very different.

His next film, made while Purgatory was still packing 'em in, was called No, We Do Have Bananas. Despite its title, it was a comedy, and Daddy proved that he could be funny. Not very funny, it's true, but somewhat. This film, in which Daddy played a much-celebrated fruit wholesaler with secret ambitions to return to school and become a surgeon, dwarfed even the success of his earlier effort. Papa Lucre himself was surprised at the receipts. He admitted to some of his colleagues that "maybe that son-in-law of mine has more than just a big dork after all."

Barely was the celluloid dry on Bananas when Daddy dived headlong into another project. This movie, You're Breaking My Heart, Cindy Goldstein, proved to be the one that really set Daddy's film persona. Cindy Goldstein was one of the first great romantic comedies, an urbanely wry tale whose erotic overtones made audiences blush as much as chuckle. Daddy's role was the suave seducer, and never was type-casting more inspired. Daddy was a villain that you couldn't get mad at, a bad guy you secretly rooted for, because he was so much more vital, so much sexier, than the supposed nice-guy character. Cindy Goldstein was the film that made Daddy an idol. Photos of him were always in demand. Thousands of women nationwide diddled themselves with his face in their minds. He was already becoming mythic.

Needless to say, these sweeping changes in Daddy's fortunes brought about tremendous alterations in every aspect of his life. Remembering with secret humiliation his destitute past, his life as Scum, he resolved to make every detail of his present life as luxurious as possible. He commissioned the building of a house which, even by Hollywood standards, was grandiose. The house consisted of thirty-seven rooms, one each for every penny his mother had been left when his father took off for the gold fields of New Jersey. The shape of every room was different, which was regarded as an architectural miracle. Every room was decorated in a different style. You could have dinner in a Louis XV dining room, then take a crap in a john done up like a Japanese pagoda. The grounds were every bit as lavish as the house. There was a swimming pool, of course. Daddy had it built in the shape of a pancreas, feeling that kidney-shaped pools had become pass'. Beyond the pool was a citrus orchard. Daddy added vitamin C to the citrus trees to enhance their growth. Beyond the orchard was a nine-hole golf course. It was quite a spread.

Daddy spent almost as much on his personal appearance as he did on his home. He bought hundreds of suits. When buying shoes, he selected them in threes rather than pairs. He realized this made no sense whatsoever, but felt he deserved the extravagance. He had French chemists manufacture a special eau de cologne for him. He had cufflinks made from monkey testicles, a sure conversation-starter at parties. He was the dandiest of all the dandies in Hollywood.

And yet, his life was a mess. His marriage was a farce. No one will ever know exactly what went wrong, but it's possible to make certain guesses.

One of the main problems was that Daddy and Selma (who, by the way, turned out to be my mother) all but stopped having sex as soon as they got married. Or at least they all but stopped having sex with each other. Selma, as I said, had never had an orgasm before hooking up with Daddy. She'd had plenty of men, and lots of fun, but she'd never managed that final letting-go. Well, if Daddy did nothing else for her, he gave her that release-and the amazing part was, after having it with Daddy, she found she could have it at will! Some trap door had opened up in her sexuality, and previously bottled-up expressions of lust poured forth in a torrent. Selma was so grateful to Daddy for showing her the way, that she decided to go back and re-fuck all the men she'd had, proving to herself again and again that now she could do it. The way she summoned back her former lovers was something like a manufacturer's callback of defective goods-she was saying, okay, just bring it in for a few minutes, and we'll make it better than new. Ensconced in the luxurious home built by her husband's vast successes, Selma ran a one-woman sex clinic.

So enthralled was she with her newfound ability to come, that Selma let her own acting career wither. It's only fair to say that this was no great loss to the motion picture archives. Selma had never really wanted to be an actress, and it showed. She acted only to please her father, who believed in turn that he'd only founded his studio to enable her to act, and so forth. It was a typical case of family communications.

In any case, Daddy knew all about Selma's stunning promiscuity, but he really didn't care. He'd never loved her, as he informed her on frequent occasions. And the house was plenty big for both of them to carry on their affairs. But, strange to tell, there was a temporary lull in my father's frenzied sex life in the early days of his fame. He was so ambitious that he simply didn't want to take the time out to screw. Or maybe it was that he was so conceited that he felt there was no one worthy of serving as his receptacle.

Whatever it was, his abstinence didn't last long. His screen image established, he didn't need to work quite so much. He had the luxury now of handpicking scripts, of rejecting all but the juiciest. It was at this time that he made one of his biggest blunders-he was offered the lead in Gone With the Wind, and he turned it down, thinking that no one could possibly sit through a movie that long, with a plot that un-likely. Gable took the part, and the rest is history. Daddy never forgave himself that brief lapse in judgment.

But, as I said, his work-load lightened after the first few pictures, and Daddy's sex life got back to normal-normal for him, that is. On the average, he banged about three budding starlets a week. The starlets, no doubt, were genuinely attracted to my father, reputation of whose prowess had spread all over Tinseltown-but there's no denying that they were hoping to gain some professional advantage by warming his bed for an evening. Daddy had come up that way himself, and he was not naive enough to deny the role of ambition in drawing debutantes to his side. My father gladly tumbled them-but never did a single favor for a single one! He took tit but withheld the tat.

News travels fast in Hollywood, and it wasn't long before all the starlets knew that balling Drew Stanford was a useless-though highly pleasurable activity. Accordingly, the debs who were in it purely for advancement stayed away from him. Yet there were dozens, perhaps hundreds, who pursued him anyway. A good lay is still a good lay-and who knew, maybe some certain kind of beauty, or some certain kind of subservience, would crack his reserve, would tap his generosity....But no, Daddy was not about to help anyone along. He did no favors until much later, when he was beginning to slip from the top, when the creeping awareness of his own age and coming infirmity began to make him sentimental....

But that was decades away. In his prime Daddy was a proud and independent shithead. He was above the need to be gracious, and was invulnerable to criticism or pain. Or at least it seemed that way, until the chain of events came along that led to the dissolution of his marriage....But that story deserves a chapter of its own.

CHAPTER FOUR

As I said, Daddy never loved Selma-or never thought he loved her-and so her egregious philandering didn't really upset him. The house was big enough, after all, to accommodate the infidelities of both. The mansion was so immense that Selma could be having a creaming hysterical orgasm in one wing, Daddy could be buggering a virgin boy in the other (Daddy had developed this taste largely out of curiosity, wanting to know what it was like to be on the other end of a man boy linking)-and neither would have any idea of the ecstasy of the other.

But the house had one design flaw, a flaw which indirectly brought about the breakup of the marriage. The kitchen was right smack dab in the middle. What this meant, in practical terms, was that there was always a chance that Daddy and Selma, coming down for a midnight (or more likely dawn) snack with their respective lovers, would meet at the refrigerator. And a meeting, in the raw, at the refrigerator, with lovers, required introductions, chit-chat, and other social conventions that could lead to discomfort.

In fact, it was not terribly uncommon for Daddy and Selma to meet each other's playmates in this way, and for the most part, the problems raised were small ones-who would get the last cold chicken drumstick, the final beer? If there were only three pieces of rhubarb pie left, who would go without? Questions like these would usually be settled amicably. Daddy would say it was his house and he was going to eat whatever he damn well pleased. Selma-who cared about food far less than about her newfound capacity for erotic catharsis-usually didn't bother to argue.

But one night she did argue-not on her own behalf, but in behalf of her new boyfriend, Hank "the Horse" Holcum. Arguing with Daddy over the last of the jello mold was risky enough-but when she dared to cast aspersions on his sexual supremacy, the shit was bound to hit the fan. And it did.

What happened was this:

That night Daddy was with a harlot-starlet named Kitty McClitty. Kitty had no talent whatsoever on the screen, but apparently won Oscars in the sack. Her film debut had come as a stand-in for Mae West's boobs on a day when Mae had a chest cold. Kitty thought that might launch her on a career, but it didn't. Her breasts, while enormous, hadn't shown enough emotion. Anyway, Kitty, like hundreds of other young women endowed with everything but talent and brains, was still hanging around Tinseltown, sinking lower and lower. Kitty had sunk as low as Daddy's midsection. But who knows-maybe it's unfair to say she'd sunk. After all, she was doing what millions of women longed to do-make it with Drew Stanford. Of course the scenario was not nearly so romantic as they showed it in the movies. There were no soft lights, schmaltzy music, no eloquent declarations of undying love. In fact, the whole thing was pretty goddamn raunchy and degrading. Still, it was an affair with Drew Stanford, and that would have been something to tell her grandchildren about-except that Kitty got herself knocked up and aborted so many times grandchildren were out of the question.

Well, Kitty wasn't important to Daddy or to anybody, but I mention her to give some idea of the kind of beautiful losers Daddy hung around with. His Scum-y past made it important for him to have people he could feel superior to. And he was in the right business for encountering inferior types.

Anyway, the real catalyst of the break-up of Daddy's and Selma's marriage was Hank "the Horse" Holcum. He wasn't just another pretty face, though he was quite extraordinarily handsome. His nickname, as you might have guessed, derived from another part of his anatomy. Thus he made a perfect companion for Selma. The two had been seeing each other for nearly a month, and The Horse still made her cry, scream, and wail louder than anybody else-including Daddy. He was so good, in fact, that Selma was beginning to believe she was in love with him. Maybe she was, who knows? He might have had a great personality, though the pair never seemed to be out of bed long enough for it to show.

Now, Hank was an aspiring actor, and he was basically using Selma the same way my father had. Well, not exactly-by the time Daddy got to Selma, he'd done enough sleeping around to establish a reputation, and was ready to take a prestigious wife. Hank, being a couple of years younger, was a step behind. He was still crashing the circles of gossip by shtupping other men's wives. No one knew the pattern better than Daddy, and maybe that's why he took such an immediate dislike to Hank-he recognized his own slimiest instincts in the younger man.

Anyway, it was about four in the morning. By chance. Daddy and Kitty came to the end of a bout at the same time as Selma and Hank. And all four of them were hungry. It had been a hard night of drinking and sex, and they'd all reached the point where hunger and depletion had made them edgy. They thought they were sober, but they weren't.

Nobody bothered dressing as they made their way from opposite wings of the house toward the kitchen. The servants were asleep, and anyway it was pitch dark. Mouths were watering at the thought of the goodies in the fridge.

Barefoot, no one made a sound as they entered the kitchen. Daddy was absently fondling Kitty McClitty's titty, and Selma was leading the Horse by his you-know-what's-'is-name. She didn't actually yank Hank, but just led him peaceably along.

Then, in the darkness, two hands reached out simultaneously for the light switch. Daddy and Selma both recoiled from the unexpected contact, but the light had been turned on. The fluorescent bulb started, sputtered, and finally lit. Everyone squinted against the sudden brightness. Gradually they saw each other. There was a moment's awkwardness, but no more than that. (It came out later that Hank and Kitty had actually been lovers a while back, but for reasons of rather misplaced discretion, they acted as if they had never met.) Introductions were made. The men and the women sized each other up. The phrase is not used casually. They were nude and sexually obsessed, and each wanted to see what the competition was showing. Daddy, it should be said, has always been quite cocky about his physical endowment; in his younger years, at least, this cockiness was thoroughly borne out by reality. Still, glancing casually downward at the Horse's paraphernalia, he could not quite shake off a certain insecurity. Similarly, Selma, who had plenty between the shoulders and the midriff, couldn't help feeling a little dwarfed by the extravagant equipment of Kitty McClitty.

These implicit measurings made everyone a little uneasy. Still, the situation could have been salvaged were it not for the unfortunate conflict over the remains of the jello mold. In fact, once the initial discomfort had passed, it seemed it might go quite pleasantly.

"So," Daddy had said, "here we all are."

"Yes," Selma replied, with just a touch of sarcasm, "here we are."

"Well," said Daddy, picking up the bantering tone, and glancing significantly at Hank's crank, "if you're still hungry, how about a bite to eat?"

"Fine," said Selma, her eyes flicking in turn over Kitty's titties, "if you're still thirsty."

"By all means."

So the four of them moved to the fridge and Daddy threw open the door. The first thing that caught his eye was the jello. It was lime jello with crushed pineapple. It was Daddy's favorite. Apparently it was also Hank's.

"Oh boy," said Hank, as Daddy grabbed the plate. "Oh boy my ass," said Daddy, hoarding the goodies and trying to withdraw.

At this point Selma made the tactical error of butting in. "Aren't you gonna even share it with him?" she asked.

"I've shared enough with him," Daddy said, his voice taking on a rather bitter tinge. "This jello is mine, and mine alone."

Hank looked at Selma and shrugged. You could tell by his face he was disappointed, but he probably would have been content to let it drop. There were plenty of other things to eat-half a ham, some caviar, Kitty. But Selma, on principle, would not let the issue drop.

"Some host!" she said, just as Daddy was lifting the first slithery spoonful to his mouth.

"I'm not his host," he exclaimed, the words muffled by the gelatin. "I'm her host!" He poked Kitty in the nipple. "If she wanted jello, I'd give her jello."

It was at this point that Selma made the fatal mistake. She knew it was bitchy but she couldn't resist. She looked deprecatingly at Daddy's crotch and said, "I bet you've been giving her jello all night!"

Daddy blushed for perhaps the first and last time in his life. Now, he knew he'd been doing a damn good job of working Kitty over, but still, an insult like that, especially in the presence of a pecker like Hank's-well, it sort of made him lose his composure. He tried to make a reply and little wads of jello came flying out of his mouth. Selma, seeing that she had him on the ropes, pressed the attack still further. She was paying him back for all the months of neglect, of condescension. She was giving it to him right where she knew it'd hurt.

"That's right," she hissed. "Jello. J-e-l-l-o." Selma turned her sarcastic gaze toward Kitty. "Tell me, honey, isn't it true? Hasn't he been giving you jello?"

Perhaps Kitty intended to come to Daddy's defense, but she was too flabbergasted to speak. She was used to all sorts of degrading situations, but still, she went to pieces when people argued. She just stood there, as if she were agreeing. Daddy felt betrayed. His face reddened another shade.

Selma went in for the kill. She made a grand gesture toward Hank's grand gland, and said, "Now this-this is a dessert! This is a goddamn parfait! This is something you can stick your teeth into! This isn't goddamn jello! There's always room for jello-and why? Because jello doesn't fill the space! I've got news for you, buddy. Before meeting Hank here, I admit I thought you were pretty good. But now-"

That was all that Daddy could take. He lifted the plate of jello and flung it at Selma's head. The china put a gash in her forehead, and crushed pineapple dribbled from her hair. Then he went after Hank. Years later, when Daddy told me the story in every minute detail, he still relished the fact that he'd knocked Hank the Horse cold. Though he didn't do it in the most manly fashion. He clunked him over the head with a frying pan. It was the first heavy object he picked up while rampaging through the kitchen. If it had been a gun, he would have shot him. As it was, he just gave him a severe concussion.

The clang of metal on scalp resounded through the house. Then, in slow motion, Hank sank to his knees. His you-know-what's-'is was dragging on the floor while he was in that position, so you get some idea of why Selma liked him. Anyway, there he was, unconscious on his knees. Daddy went over and pushed him out flat on the floor.

"You brute!" said Selma, trying to stanch the bleeding from her forehead, sweeping the jello out of her eyebrows.

That was just what Daddy wanted to hear. It was the first compliment she'd given him all night. It cheered him up.

Anyway, if you know anything about sadism, you won't be surprised to hear that this little tantrum had given Daddy an erection. It was strange-when Selma had been insulting his manhood, his pecker had receded, as if trying to shrink out of earshot; but as soon as he started inflicting pain, it popped right up and stayed there. In Daddy's telling of the tale, it was a remarkable boner, even for him, and he was eager to use it.

"Jello, huh?" he hissed at Selma, pointing at the proud protuberance. "You call that jello? I'll give ya jello!"

He made a grab for her, but Selma quickly jumped back and started running around the kitchen. She must have been terrified, because she'd never before been known to turn down an offer of mufki-mufki, no matter what the circumstances. But she sensed the pent-up violence in Daddy, and she was scared.

He chased her around the kitchen table. She always managed to keep a step ahead. She threw chairs in Daddy's path as he pursued her. Daddy tripped over Hank's crank a couple of times and came very close to falling headlong. Finally, he realized that he wasn't going to catch her without help, and he ordered Kitty to grab her next time she came around the table.

Kitty was confused. She didn't know what to do. She hated to get involved in other people's squabbles, but on the other hand, she did have a certain taste for bondage. Besides, if she did this favor for Daddy, maybe Daddy would do a favor for her, and maybe that would lead to the break she'd been waiting for....Without thinking about it further, she grabbed Selma by the hair as she raced by. Selma struggled and thrashed, but Kitty had the stature of a Valkyrie and the determination of a phys ed teacher. She held her fast until Daddy had climbed over Hank and arrived on the scene.

"Jello, huh?" he repeated manically, spitting the words into Selma's face. "I'll give ya jello! Come on, Kitty, help me lay 'er down!"

Kitty had never before assisted at the rape of a person's own wife, but her time in Hollywood had taught her to be flexible. Accordingly, she put her fist in the small of Selma's back and maneuvered her across the kitchen table. Selma kicked and scratched, but for naught. She was laid out flat, her shoulder blades pressed against the table, her legs forced apart, her vulva suspended vulnerably over the edge.

Kitty moved around and held her arms. Daddy positioned himself between her knees and prepared for penetration. They eyed each other with a passionate hatred. But there was more to it than that, because Daddy's tool was at full staff plus, and Selma's innards, for all her protests, were more than ready to receive him.

He didn't go about it gently. He plunged it in with a vengeance, literally. He rocked and thrust, and the kitchen table creaked. The legs skidded along the floor. He humped and pumped, cursing Selma out all the while. Selma, who had problems of her own, seemed to like that, and she started coming despite herself. She was screaming and wailing, and Kitty, trying to get in on the act, as it were, started screaming right along. The racket was intense, but not enough to wake up Hank. Daddy flailed away, and somehow both he and Selma knew that this was to be their last lay. There was too much cruelty in it, and the passion was the passion of death....So they poured their all into it, loving, hating and losing all at the same time. By the time Daddy let the seed fly, he was thoroughly exhausted and close to tears. Selma was beyond tears, and also beyond orgasm, in the realm of a constant dull droning. Kitty felt like she'd been witnessing an Academy Award performance. Hank was out of it.

Why, you may wonder, have I spent so much time on this episode of cruelty and lust? The reason is simple: this is the night I was conceived! When Daddy let his angry sperm go squirting into Selma's battered insides that night, I was launched. So, in other words, I had problems right from the start. I was born of rage, jealousy, and the sense of being fed up.

Now maybe you're starting to understand why I'm writing this book in the first place.

CHAPTER FIVE

That night-my first-was essentially the last of my parents' marriage. Selma moved out the next day, leaving Daddy alone in his thirty-seven room house.

Selma did not realize, of course, that she was pregnant. That awareness did not come to her for a month or so. But even if she had known it, her decision to leave would have held steadfast. First of all, she wasn't the maternal type, to put it mildly. And second of all, she wanted nothing more to do with Daddy. Nothing, ever, period.

So, with the beginnings of me in her womb, she went crawling back to Papa Lucre. Her doting father welcomed her with open arms, and readily took her side against Daddy. The thing that made Papa Lucre most furious was the thought of all the money he'd pissed away making Daddy a star. Now that Daddy was established, even Papa Lucre couldn't tear him down. And now that the marriage was kaput, little Selma would no longer reap the benefits. Papa Lucre felt, and rightly so, that he'd been had. He concurred with every nasty, insulting, insinuating thing that Selma had to say about Daddy-and she covered a wide spectrum, to be sure.

But it would be a mistake to portray Daddy as a callous egotist who took his wife's departure with equanimity. In reality, he was very upset about Selma's leaving-and the emotion surprised no one more than himself. He'd thought he didn't love her. He'd thought her constant stream of lovers didn't bother him. He thought he'd married her only as a convenience, only as a launch, and that he kept her around afterward only as an appendage. But somewhere along the line, he actually had got to love her, and he was bereft by her sudden and unequivocal departure.

So then, within twelve hours of my conception, both my parents' lives had gotten into pretty miserable shape. Daddy, trying to quell his grief, threw himself into his work with abandon. He made a ton of money, added to his already vast fame, attracted thousands more fans and idolaters-but he was not exactly happy. Oh, his vanity was stroked, his ceaseless hunger for fame was being fed-but he was aware that something was missing. He wasn't as cynical as he'd pretended. His way of adapting to the loss was to become more cynical still. But the formation of moral scar tissue takes some time. Meanwhile, it hurts. Daddy eased his pain by occasional sadistic bouts with prostitutes, script girls, bell-boys, and household pets.

Selma was hardly in better shape. She had loved my father once, madly, and all that had happened had turned her former affection into a passionate loathing. She could not even bear to hear my father's name mentioned. She wanted no part of him-and that included the developing seed that had been implanted in her belly.

Her career had lapsed. Her early attempts to be a good wife to my father, and her later sexual indulgences, had kept her off the screen for two years. The public forgets faces in two years. Papa Lucre could have catapulted her back to stardom-maybe-but Selma herself seemed to lack the will. She'd been through the grueling process once-she didn't know if she had the strength to do it again. She didn't know if she could stand going back to the hot lights, the suffocating makeup, the discomforts of fame that no one talks about, but with which all the famous must contend. A star cannot belch in public, cannot risk a secret fart. A star cannot be dull, cannot steer clear of scandal. It's a grind. Coupled with Selma's lack of talent, this uncertainty paralyzed her. She made no more movies until she reached the age where she could gracefully play cameo roles. Her lack of artistry was less apparent when all she had to do was stroll across the screen, more a ghost than a character, a wisp of the past.

In her present, however, she was sure of one thing: she didn't want to be strapped with Drew Stanford's kid. As soon as she learned of her pregnancy, she began making discreet inquiries all over Hollywood about getting an abortion. For people with money, abortions were no problem, of course. Still, given the morals of the times, abortion was an issue not to be taken too lightly. Selma vacillated, but if left to her own devices, I'm sure she would have opted for the scraping. This decision may not seem that earth shattering to you, but imagine what it might have meant to me! Instead of the intelligent and compassionate novelist that I am today, I might have been a mere clot on the scrubbed floor of a shady California gynecologist! But fortunately I'm here, and so our story proceeds.

As I said, Selma probably would have opted for the abortion, but my father, through a mutual friend, found out about the pregnancy, and about Selma's intentions, and would have no part of it. He insisted that the child be born, and he offered to take custody of it, demanding nothing at all of Selma-short of doing the bearing. By his own admission, Daddy got down on his knees and begged Selma to have the child. Finally, her already shaky resolve swept away by Daddy's pleas, she agreed to let the pregnancy go to term. And here I am.

Now, you may wonder why Daddy was so intent on letting me be born, and I must confess I haven't got an answer. Certain people may want to give Daddy the benefit of the doubt, and assume that the no abortion stand was a moral one. But this argument doesn't hold water in light of every other aspect of Daddy's life. Especially the things he did to me after doing me the big fat favor of letting me be born-but we'll get to those juicy abuses in time. No, I don't think you can say Daddy was being nice. I think it had more to do with his belated and rather pathetic love for Selma. He'd lost her, and he knew it, and I guess he felt he'd have her at least a little bit if he had her child. Maybe he felt he'd have her even more if he slept with her child, but that's a number of years down the road.

Anyway, after the confab it was decided that I wouldn't be squelched. I was going to be a real Hollywood baby. Now, almost every kid in Hollywood comes from a broken home, and so I can't really claim much distinction in that. But I was a fetus from a broken home, and in some perverse way, I think that's sort of impressive. Selma and my father saw each other maybe twice while I was in the tadpole stage. She wouldn't even let him hang around while she was in labor. She did it all alone, and as soon as I'd been born, cleaned, and swaddled, she had me handed over to Daddy. She washed her hands of the whole thing.

I suppose that partly explains the weirdly intense closeness between Daddy and me. I came out of a uterus, sure, but I never had a mother. Daddy was both parents. He was also my siblings, and as it turned out, he became my first and fastest boyfriend. He was everything to me, and I was a lot of things to him-the only remnant of his marriage, not to mention a constant flattery to his narcissism. I was half him, after all, and my features resembled his at least as much as Selma's. The whole situation was crazy and diseased, but I don't want to give the impression it was all bad.

In the beginning especially, it had some nice moments.

CHAPTER SIX

Being Daddy's daughter did have certain advantages. For one thing, Daddy was awfully goddamn rich. Now, as I was growing up, I had no way of knowing that everybody wasn't rich. I saw my own house, with its big empty high-ceilinged rooms, its full staff of maids, cooks, and other assorted schleps, its beautiful grounds and swimming pool; and I saw the houses of some of Daddy's Hollywood friends, which all in all were every bit as grand. And that's all I saw. I never saw the poor side of town. I never saw a small house, a tattered dress, a hand-me-down. My life sucked eggs, but at least it was spared the petty anxieties that poverty brings.

Along with easy money and a secure financial situation, Hollywood brought me lots of affection as a little girl. Movie people, you see, are the biggest fakers on earth-it's their business, after all. They love to kiss babies, fondle them, talk goo-goo, the whole schmear. Part of the reason they like it, is that it puts them on center stage. Everybody's watching the baby, so everybody's watching them while they're fussing with the baby. It's a function of the ham instinct. Also, it has to do with the Hollywood impulse always to be showing the world what a sweet down-to-earth person you are, like I was a goddamn poster child or something. I was about five years old when I started seeing the hypocrisy. But until then, I absorbed all the tickling and smooching that Tinseltown had to offer, and I guess I was happy about it. I started growing up as a smiley, good-natured kid. Well, that wouldn't last long.

I should stress, though, that I really didn't know how off-the-wall my whole situation was at the time. For example, it wasn't till I started kindergarten that I realized that most kids had a mommy as well as a daddy. I didn't even know what a mommy was! I thought, if you had a daddy, that was all you needed. (Later, I got to think that if you had my daddy, a psychiatrist was what you needed.)

Aside from my confusion about parents, I didn't have much understanding of lifestyles. In other words, I had no way of determining that my father was a drunken libertine. These recollections, of course, have been pieced together after the fact, dredged up through years of agonizing psychotherapy. But there are certain impressions I've been carrying around since toddler hood, that even now have a remarkable vividness. For example, there's the smell of my father's breath when he rocked me on his knee in the evening. I was intrigued by that aroma long before I realized it was gin. To me it smelled dimly like the shrubs we had in front of our house, which I later learned were called juniper. Still later I learned that gin was made from juniper berries. Later still, I realized that Daddy was on the slow but sure route to becoming an alcoholic. But, speaking of sitting on his knee in the evenings, that reminds me of another of my childhood's most vivid remembrances.

Daddy used to hold me on both his knees, with his big strong hands wrapped all the way around my waist. He bounced me up and down, half lifting me so that the bouncing wouldn't be too jarring. He'd recite a sing-song rhyme I can't remember-but what I do remember is that, at the end of the rhyme, he'd jostle me off his knees and slide me down his legs toward his lap. The expanse of his thighs seemed impossibly long, like he was a giant. The cloth of his trousers would feel slightly rough against my legs. And then, when I was nearing the end of my wonderful ride, I'd encounter something hard. It would poke against my bottom as I slid down, and it seemed strong enough to propel me right back up my Daddy's leg. I never gave that fibrous lump much thought at the time. But later on I realized that it was called a penis. And later still, when I'd begun to know something about penises, I realized that it was not simply a penis, but an erect penis! And later still, when I realized that most families don't do things the way our family did things, I realized that it wasn't exactly kosher for a Daddy to go bouncing his little girl around with a hard-on. But like I said, I didn't give it much thought at the time. I mean, the guy kept me in toys and zwieback; I wasn't going to make a stink.

Daddy's career went extremely well in the early years of my life, and I must say I deserved some of the credit. What I mean is, the publicity people made a big deal out of the fact that Drew Stanford had graciously accepted custody of the beautiful daughter his ex-wife didn't want. Everyone thought Daddy must be an A-l nice guy, and his popularity increased another notch. At this stage, he was the highest paid star in Hollywood. He was a millionaire when being a millionaire still meant something. He was big enough not to be pushed around by any studio. If MGM didn't give him terms, he went to Fox. If Fox gave him a hard time, he went to RKO. He had his pick of projects. Studio writers were instructed to come up with stories custom-made for him.

Not surprisingly, the big push paid off in dollars and cents. Depending on your taste, you might even say it resulted in a decent picture or two. Daddy had some of his greatest roles in those years. He played Robin Hood in Robin Hood. He played Hamlet in Hamlet. He played the Count of Monte Cristo in the Count of Monte Cristo. He was offered the lead in Madame Bovary, but turned it down because it wasn't the title role. He had the luxury of arrogance.

His social life at this time was a reflection of his professional standing. He mingled only with Tinseltown's best-who happened also to be Tinseltown's trashiest. Soon after Selma's departure, he'd come out of mourning with a bang, as it were, and had gone through a truly dazzling string of debs and dancers. There were parties every night. The liquor flowed.

And, as usual, I was too young to see anything out of the ordinary in all this. If I woke up in the morning and walked downstairs to the living room to find Daddy passed out drunk on the floor between two naked women, it didn't surprise me in the least. Or if, getting up to go potty in the middle of the night, I caught him in flagrante delicto, I didn't bat an eyelash. The only time I got at all upset was once when I saw him performing cunnilingus on a woman whose legs flapped open and closed in delight. I was afraid she might snap her thighs shut and strangle my Daddy Dearest. Daddy, however, had the foresight to come up for air on occasion, and everything seemed to turn out all right.

There was one thing I could always count on with Daddy, though-and that was that birthdays and holidays would be done up in royal fashion. Daddy never stinted on expense or special effects. When I had a birthday cake, it was the biggest mother birthday cake Hollywood had ever seen! As a matter-of-fact, this penchant of Daddy's for gigantic cakes led to one of the tragedies that marred my childhood. At my fourth birthday party, which featured a live clown, a rented merry-go-round, and the entire cast of Gone with the Wind, a little girl fell headlong into the cake and drowned in the icing. I remember her pathetic thrashings as she tried to free herself from the gooey butter cream. At first, the grown-ups thought she was only playing. That was before she turned blue. By the time anyone realized she was suffocating, it was too late. They carried her out and the party continued. The party might have stopped if the kid was someone important, but she wasn't. Her father played bit parts and her mother did makeup. As it was, the little brat ruined the cake-Daddy wasn't about to let her ruin the whole party.

Christmas was another excuse for indulging in the hugest excesses of conspicuous consumption. One year I had four thousand and sixteen presents. Every one of them was wrapped in a different kind of paper, with different ribbon, and a different bow. The poor salesgirl who wrapped all those packages must have developed arthritis on the spot. But then, she wasn't rich, so what'd she expect? But I'm not trying to suggest that Daddy tried too hard to win my love with material things. That would suggest that Daddy was insecure, and who could ever imagine that about Drew Stanford? No, if anything, he was still trying to compensate for his days as Harry Scum.

As a child, he'd celebrated Christmas by receiving a peppermint stick, period. Some years all he got was a peppermint stick wrapper. He had to turn it inside out to get any remaining peppermint juice from last year's stick. He had it tough. So maybe he went overboard. It was understandable.

What I can't condone, though, is the way my father treated his parents in later life. His father, true enough, had been a heel, and an unsuccessful heel at that, and I can understand that Daddy would have let him rot in hell without raising a finger to help. But what about the mother? True, Mama Scum never had been able to provide very much for her ambitious young offspring, but she'd tried. Hadn't she walked the streets of Topeka, turning tricks that would keep little Harry in shoesies and sockies? Hadn't she hustled long past her prime so that the lazy little Scum could prolong his days of childish indolence? She'd done everything a mother could do-her only failing was that she hadn't done it well enough. And Daddy wouldn't forgive her that. He never sent her anything at Christmas. Well, I shouldn't say never. One year he sent her a Sears catalogue. But that was a sarcastic gift-he knew she couldn't afford to buy anything in it. It was Daddy's idea of a joke.

The truth is, I guess Daddy had grown ashamed of his parents. Hollywood, you see, is made up of people who have renounced their pasts, right down to the names they were born with. The raunchier the name, the more sordid the past, the more complete the renunciation. Daddy was ashamed of the fact that his mother had been a whore. Perhaps he didn't realize that he was a whore as well. He had the same contempt for his mother that the thousand dollar call-girl has for the two-bit streetwalker.

But I don't mean to badmouth Daddy. However much of a turd he might have been to other people, he was always extravagant to me-until puberty, at least. But no, now that I think of it, he was extravagant with me after puberty, too-his extravagance simply took another turn.

All in all, my early childhood had a lot of laughs. I especially liked bossing around the servants. I enjoyed refusing my dinner and forcing the cook to make me something else. I liked to order the gardener down on his hands and knees, to give me pony rides through the compost heap. In other words, even at the age of four or five, I had the makings of an A-l rich bitch. It was not till much later that I developed a social conscience, and blossomed into a liberal and fair-minded woman. I want to go on record as saying that I am against nuclear power, as well as tyranny in all its many forms. Save the whales.

But those pious sentiments, you realize, would have been out of place in the Hollywood of my childhood. You see, it was left to the likes of Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, and Jane Fonda to give the movie industry a reputation for liberalism. In Daddy's heyday, they were all pigs, and were proud of it. They'd clawed their way up from nothing, and now that they were on top, they took delight in kicking the people underneath them.

The reason I linger on these things, is that they show how limited my perspective was until I started school. Then everything changed. I spent less time with Daddy, and that was the biggest difference of all-previously, I'd spent every hour with him, when he was away from the studio. When he got home for his afternoon shaker of martinis, I sat by him and goo-goo'd. When he had his second shaker, before dinner, I was right there, dribbling on his leg. When he had his third shaker, during dinner, there I was, being the apple of his eye. By the time he finished his fourth shaker, after dinner, I was starting to get sleepy. He, on the other hand, was just starting to wake up. He tucked me into bed every night. He was very affectionate about it. In fact, looking back, he was pretty goddamned perverted about it! He never actually molested me-at least he had the decency until I reached my first menstrual period not to make his advances out and out sexual. But I suppose that, all along, Daddy had his plan worked out, and every night he subtly checked my progress, touching me gently here, gauging my measurements there....I, of course, had no idea what was going on. All I knew was that my Daddy Dearest was spending time with me and apparently enjoying it. I asked nothing more.

But as I said, the whole routine changed when I started school. I had to get up early to make the bell-and that was hours before Daddy had even stirred. He had a perennial hangover, but it bothered him much less if he didn't get up before noon. So I didn't see Daddy in the A.M. Nor did we have lunch together, like we used to. Well, actually it used to be lunch for me and breakfast for Daddy. Tuna for me and raw eggs for him. But now I shlepped my tuna or my peanut butter and jelly to the schoolyard, and Daddy slept even later. We still had dinner together, of course, but Daddy's dinners were always liquid.

Even more important, however, than the lessened amount of time that Daddy and I spent together, was the fact that school gave me my first exposure to normal people. I mean people with families. People whose home lives were not one big long drunken orgy. People who came from a background of decency. As you can well understand, I was pretty confused at first. It seemed to me that everybody else did everything ass backwards, Only gradually did it begin to dawn on me that maybe it was Daddy and I who were a little weird. This suggestion was the first inkling I had of a moral sense.

Needless to say, it got me into plenty of trouble.

CHAPTER SEVEN

As I said, school was my first taste of normalcy. But everything's relative, and the normalcy of a Hollywood kindergarten is not really all that normal. Many of the children came in wearing stage makeup. Some of them were already neurotic beyond their years. The teacher did extra work in her spare time. She'd come to Hollywood twenty years before, hoping to make it as an actress. One look at her provided ample evidence of why she hadn't made it as a debutante. She had a face born to play the role of kindergarten teacher. And she did it well.

Her name was Miss Brookes, and I guess she was the closest thing I ever had to a mother. As it turned out, she was a lesbian, and the affection she showered me with was not so different in its overtones from the affection Daddy gave me. But at least there was some consistency there. Where other little girls are taught to endure endless kisses on the forehead, endless pinchings of the cheek, I was put through innumerable tender tracings of the rump, millions of tiny tappings on the chest (though God knows what they were looking for there!) and even an occasional stroke along the thighs. Not that I minded-who would mind those sorts of intimate attentions, were it not for the moral scruples that don't develop till later in life?

I suppose I should also give some brief mention of my kindergarten classmates, especially the kid who became my "boyfriend." What does it really mean when prepubescent youngsters call each other boyfriend and girlfriend? It's an amazing thing, if you think about it. Is it some shadowy preview of the sex drive, or just some nameless yearning that starts off way in advance of the ability to see it through? Who knows. In any case, it's actually sort of touching. It really is a kind of pie-eyed love. Anyway, the object of my affections was a boy named Jimmy Gentry. Jimmy was a producer's son, which might lead you to suspect I had the gold-digger's instinct from my very earliest years. But there was nothing mercenary in my love for Jimmy. I just thought he was cute. He had dirty blond hair and always wore blue coveralls.

He was dynamite with crayons or finger paints, a real artist. He had excellent manners, and never slurped his milk. He'd leave a little at the bottom of the carton, rather than make that disgusting sucking sound with the straw. He was very neat with his graham crackers-never left crumbs at the corners of his mouth. And he could beat up every other boy in the class-which he proved on occasion in the schoolyard. He was my hero. Even at that age, there was some pre-erotic instinct in me to be excited by his manliness-I guess "boy-liness" would be a better word. I used to always put my blanket near Jimmy's at nap time, and sometimes, when the teacher wasn't looking, I'd crane my neck over and kiss him. But that was as far as it went.

In retrospect, my love for Jimmy Gentry was probably the healthiest and purest emotion of my life. I just had it about fifteen or so years too soon. By the time I reached the age where my yearnings would have done me any good, I was too messed up to have the right yearnings. I have Daddy to thank for that. But anyway, Jimmy Gentry had a tragically short life, and I would have been heartbroken if I'd married him. Jimmy began, and ended, his professional life as a stuntman. He was standing in as General Custer in the movie Little Big Horn, and a real Indian wandered onto the set and shot him with a real arrow. Jimmy Gentry may have been the last U.S. Cavalry officer to die in the Indian wars. He predated Marlon Brando in his deep involvement with Native American affairs.

Anyway, aside from Jimmy, my classmates consisted of the usual assortment of weird kids. A few of them had those funky thick glasses, with butterflies and stuff on the frames. Of course we had our share of nose-pickers-one kid, whose name I won't mention, had his finger in his nose every minute from September to June, and later went on to become a major star! Aside from the nose-pickers, we had the kids who couldn't keep their hands out of their pants. Then we had a few who cried if you so much as looked at them cockeyed. Then there were those who sang off-key whenever we did the Star-Spangled Banner or any simple kid's song. In other words, that kindergarten showed all the shortcomings and weirdness that would make people's later lives miserable. And that's why I say it was my first taste of normalcy.

I suppose I should now try to give some account of what was happening with Daddy's career during the early years of my education.

As the 1930s were drawing to a close, Drew Stanford's reputation was at an all-time high. His name was a sure box-office draw. It was taken for granted that any film that came along with a certain kind of protagonist-a suave, irresistible, urbane, but ultimately evil one-would be starred by him. He was the first of the romantic bad guys, the erotic rogues. If you want to be sociological about the history of cinema, you could say that my father's career bridged the gap between Victorian and modern sensibility. In the Victorian age, a woman could admit she was sexually drawn to the hero only if there was an appropriately sappy mood-soft lighting, promises of endless devotion-and only if the hero was morally sound. In the modern age, when women are taught to acknowledge the seedier side of their longings, it's okay to have the hots for a handsome man even if he's a bastard-or maybe especially if he's a bastard. My father was the first of the bastard heroes. His name was a household word.

But Hollywood stars are a lot like real stars. They burn brightest when they're in the process of burning out, and this, sadly, was the case with Daddy. His success-given the limits of his acting capabilities was based on charm, good looks, sheer animal energy-and, to some degree at least, those qualities are predicated on youth. My father did not have the warmth and more durable charm, say, of a Spencer Tracy or Henry Fonda-he could do it only as long as his chin stayed firm, his hairline stayed put, his muscles stayed taut. As his youth began to fade, so did his prospects.

But it should be understood that this process was gradual. Daddy's early movies had exploited his boyish appeal. Five years later, he was playing off the full power of his robust twenties. Five years after that, he was resorting to the riper maturity of thirty. But as thirty moved toward thirty-five, and as thirty-five moved toward forty, Daddy began to have his problems.

The problem was, he wasn't quite flexible enough. He didn't have the character to step off center-stage, to let the young guys have the leads, and to be content with the often worthwhile supporting roles. He simply had too much ego. He had come to believe too literally in the myth of the star.

The nineteen-forties brought a new kind of moviemaking to Hollywood. It was film, noir, a hard edged, cynical approach to things. It was a cinema of anger and frustration-young men's anger and frustration. The thing about film noir was that, for all its violence and scorn, there was an undertone of thwarted idealism about it. (This undertone later reached its most poignant pinnacle in the films of James Dean.) My father could handle the cynicism just fine-it was the undertone of idealism that threw him. And he was simply too old for the genre. For example, when Fox made I Was a Teen-Age Gun Runner, Daddy was offered the role of the lead's father. He couldn't get it through his head that he couldn't play the seventeen-year-old lead. He finally accepted the father role, but he resented it, and the resentment showed in his performance. If there was an Oscar for Supporting Actor-With-a-Bug-Up-His-Ass, Daddy would have won it that year for sure.

The situation with Gun Runner was just the beginning of Daddy's decline. His name was still worth money, and producers and fellow actors alike wanted him in on their projects-but not as the romantic lead. Increasingly, he played the uncle, the older brother, the behind-the-scenes wheeler-dealer. Year by year, new stars came up to take top billing and the lion's share of the fan mail. Women who had once diddled themselves in my father's image, now regarded him as an appealing but somehow neutral presence. Barely middle-aged, the accelerated world of Hollywood had turned him into something of an elder statesman.

Daddy hated that role. Trouper that he was, he still smiled for the cameras, still gave the press its due, still provided good public relations for the studios but inside he was fuming. This hidden rage came out more and more in Daddy's personal life. Socially and sexually, he had always been something of a selfish bully, but the spectre of age brought these characteristics out in him ten-fold. He was so intent on reassuring himself of his continuing virility, that he made it his business to bruise any woman he was with. He began mega-dosing with vitamins to try and keep his potency at peak. He drank more and more, and while all the alcohol pretty much undid the benefits of the vitamins, in his drunken stupor he could imagine that he'd performed far more splendidly than he actually had.

Daddy felt, correctly, that he was running out of time, and his life took on a veritable frenzy of decadence. The music was louder, the parties higher pitched. His clothes became gaudier-he intended to go out in a blaze of glory.

Aside from all his other excesses, it was at this stage of his life that Daddy began to take a serious interest in young men. I suppose a psychiatrist would say he was trying to recapture his own lost youth. In practice, what this meant was that Daddy longed to embrace any handsome young man with a firm tight body and an unwrinkled face. Having been a reluctant catamite in his youth, he became an enthusiastic pederast in later life. No party at our house was complete without a bit of buggery.

It mightn't have been so bad if Daddy had been discreet about his back-door tastes, but it was not within Daddy's nature to be discreet about anything. He parted the young lads' cheeks in the middle of the living room, with a party going on. He sometimes dressed his favorites up in stockings, in fancy garter belts, in sequined gowns. To the very end, Daddy would maintain that he hadn't a homosexual bone in his body-whatever bone he did have, however, was lavished upon people of both sexes. In a sense, though, it's reasonable to say that Daddy was neither heterosexual nor homosexual nor bisexual-he was simply narcissistic through and through. When he shtupped a woman, he was only trying to show off. When he buggered a man, he was only trying to see himself reflected in the other man's beauty. In that sense, Daddy was a lifelong masturbator.

But far be it from me to psychoanalyze my Daddy Dearest. He had his problems, but who doesn't? The weird situation around the mansion, though, did have one very important result for me-Daddy decided that things had gotten so crazy that I should be sent away to boarding school. This decision was made when I was ten. I still didn't really know the facts of life, but I'd begun to have some inklings and I sort of knew that something was rotten in the state of Denmark. So, in order to preserve whatever shreds of natural decency might still be hiding out inside me, Daddy decided I should spend some time away.

Needless to say, the parting was traumatic for both Daddy and me. We'd never stopped being close. I'd never stopped sitting on his lap in the evenings, and he'd never stopped having a hard-on when I did it. He was my sole source of affection, and I was the only person other than himself that he loved. But Daddy made me realize that the separation was for my own good. There were certain things, he said, that a young lady shouldn't find out too soon. He made it sound like he was making a purely unselfish decision-but looking back, it occurs to me that he sent me away because, considering the crowd he was hanging out with then, he was afraid that some dark night some pervert would sneak up to my room and deflower me before he did!

But that possibility would be taken care of-it was boarding school for me.

CHAPTER EIGHT

As it turned out, boarding school was only slightly less perverted than life at home had been. Since I was sent to the most expensive school in California, all my classmates were filthy rich and filthy-minded as well. Many of the girls seemed to have strong lesbian tendencies, but they may simply have been trying to emulate the teachers. Boarding school was the first place I ever heard the word dyke. The word conjured up images of someone built like a wall, and certain of our boarding school instructresses fitted the description admirably.

In any case, I liked boarding school. The classes were easy, and you couldn't flunk out, because the school lost money if you did. At ten grand a year, they wanted to keep you around no matter what. You'd have to do something pretty awful for them to throw you out. Several of us tried, but never came up with anything awful enough. Mere diddling, of course, was a piddling offense. With typical American hypocrisy, actually getting laid might have been adequate grounds for expulsion-but since there weren't any boys around, that wasn't really a possibility. So we just hung around, went to class, played field, and explored. We knew the breast development of every girl in the dorm. The formation of little pink buds called for a general examination. Likewise pubic hair. We looked at pubic hair under a microscope-sometimes with the owner of the pubic hair still attached! We were basically just normal kids with a healthy sexual curiosity.

It was in the dorm that I first really learned the facts of life. The older girls knew all about that stuff, and passed it along to the younger ones as a kind of secret body of knowledge. I eagerly got in on the discussions, of course.

Now, because of my rather unique upbringing, I already knew a certain amount of stuff that the other girls didn't. For example, many of the girls had never seen a penis. I saw little else all through my childhood. I didn't know exactly how a penis worked, or why it did what it did, but I certainly knew what it looked like. After all, I'd found Daddy passed out naked hundreds of times, and once or twice when I'd seen him buggering a young man, I'd been made to realize that the handle was standard equipment on males.

Sol was able to describe the contours of a penis to the other girls in the dorm, and I must say that gave me a certain amount of prestige. The girls used to all gather round when I'd talk about it. When I tried to explain the dimensions, a number of girls thought I was making it up. It seemed too big to believe. Take it or leave it, I'd say-and the girls would choose to believe, as it gave them something to look forward to in later life. Believe me, there is no one in the world more susceptible to notions of sheer erotic excess than rich young girls at boarding school!

Anyway, despite my expertise on penises, there were other aspects of the facts of life about which I knew nothing. Ironically, I knew far less about the female equipment than about the male. I guess this was because I'd never had a mother. I'd seen naked women, of course-passed out right alongside Daddy-and so I was familiar with the external regions. I'd seen some whopper tits in my day, as well as pubic bushes of every hue and shade. But I didn't really know what went on inside. I knew that Daddy's schlong fit somewhere between the legs, but I didn't even know exactly where-in my thorough self-examinations, I hadn't come across anything even remotely roomy enough to accommodate that serpent of flesh. So I was confused, but not for long. The other girls titterings filled me in on just how it was done. I gasped to think about the tightness of the fit. One girl, who had never had a man but who was fond of squatting on doorknobs, coke bottles, assorted vegetables and garden tools, assured us that it wasn't so bad after the first push.

Another thing I was totally in the dark about was menstruation. One thing I had never seen at Daddy's parties was menstrual blood-though I had seen blood flowing from cuts and welts on occasions when Daddy had been in a particularly sadistic mood. I'd never seen a woman bleeding from the loins, however, which was just as well, because I'm sure it would've grossed me out. So this was a brand new biological domain for me. Now, no one seemed to have the whole story about the role of menstruation-about the chemistry of it, that is. But some of the older girls had already gotten their periods, and they described in fascinating detail the cramps, the pads, the smell, the bitchiness, the depression, and all the other wonderful things that go along with becoming a woman. I couldn't wait for it to happen to me-little did I know that my first menstruation would be the event that would trigger the most traumatic development of my whole miserable life!

But my period was rather slow in coming, and I spent two and a half years at the boarding school, going home only for occasional vacations. Daddy scrutinized me closely on those visits. I didn't yet realize just what he was looking for. Later on I realized he was probing my face and body for signs of a suitable maturity, for evidence that I was ripe for the plucking! Because yes, Daddy had had in mind all along to nurture me along to be his mistress!

I was supposed to be the person who would restore his ex-wife to him-the wife he realized far too late he'd loved. Not only that, but I was to be the lover who would save Daddy from the continuing draining swirl of his promiscuity-as he got older, as his attractiveness waned, he didn't want to face refusals, didn't want to be passed up for younger men. What better way to protect oneself against that, than to have an incestuous relation with one's daughter-to play off the love and closeness that have been nurtured since childhood. In a sense, incest is a logical, if unnatural, consummation.

But these theories-or justifications, if you prefer-did not occur to me till much later. All I knew in the meantime was that Daddy and I were both aging. But I was moving toward my prime, while Daddy was moving away from his. His hair had begun to show fringes of gray. His formerly rock-firm jaw showed the first traces of slackness. His eyes were lined at the corners-though the orbs themselves still kept their sarcastic and sensual twinkle. He was keeping his eye on me, and no mistake.

I, on the other hand, was just beginning to become prone to a nameless sexual excitement. The dormitory bull-sessions had given me a heightened awareness of erotic possibilities, and though I wasn't yet in close touch with my physical needs, I knew that something was going on. And of course, the first object of my feelings was Daddy....Still, I didn't foresee what perhaps I should have known was coming....

It was spring when my period finally arrived. It happened in math class. I was sitting there, and suddenly I felt something warm and squishy between my legs. I knew I wasn't peeing in my pants, but I didn't know what I was doing. You'd think that, with all the talk in the dorm, and with all my own anticipation, I would have immediately figured out what was happening. But the sensation was so unprecedented that I just didn't know what to make of it. I sat there for a few minutes, feeling the warmth and the wetness spread out under me. Then, finally, I figured I better reach under my dress and see what was going on. Now, at my boarding school, it wasn't that unusual for a girl to simply put her hand up under her dress in the middle of math class, so no one batted an eyelash as my fingers went probing. My fingertips discovered a thick, slippery liquid which I didn't immediately recognize as blood. But I was scared, and on impulse, I lifted my skirt up and looked down at my crotch. The teacher dropped her chalk and started breathing heavy. But it was blood, no mistaking it, oozing, spreading, staining the virginal white cloth of my cotton panties.

Without saying a word, I got up and ran out of the room. I headed for the nurse's office. One thing all the girls knew was that the nurse had the key to the Kotex dispenser. My thighs were slippery as I ran along the hall. I felt almost dizzy, not physically really, but just from amazement at what was going on inside me.

I made it to the nurse's office, and was given the standard reassuring spiel along with my first sanitary napkin. What I didn't know, however, was that, as soon as I went back to my room to change my panties, the nurse called the headmistress, and the headmistress called Daddy. Daddy had left strict instructions to be notified the minute I began to menstruate. It was to be almost as big a day for him as for me.

I was on my way back to the math class when the headmistress intercepted me. I was to pack my things, she said, and get ready to go home.

My father had already dispatched the limousine to pick me up....

CHAPTER NINE

Waiting for the limousine, my head swam in a euphoric fog. Wondrous things seemed to be happening; amazing changes were taking place. First, of course, was the exciting progress of my own body moving from girlhood to maturity. But this change seemed to be paralleled by an even more wonderful development-my Daddy Dearest seemed to care even more about me now, seemed to hold me in higher esteem, seemed more inclined to make a fuss over me, to love me. I couldn't have asked for anything better!

Elated, I went back to my dorm room and packed some things for what I thought would be a brief vacation at home. I threw a couple of dresses, my books, and plenty of panties into a suitcase, and then just waited for my ride. A few girls who were hanging around the dorm asked what was going on. Proudly, I told them-about my period and about my father's suggested celebration. The whole thing seemed to improve my image in the eyes of the school. The other girls were jealous that my father actually paid attention to me-a rare thing in Hollywood families.

Finally the limousine arrived. James, the chauffeur, had apparently been given instructions to handle me with the utmost care. He took my luggage, ushered me into the back seat, and drove much more carefully than usual on the trip home. Daddy didn't want his little virgin to be bruised along the way! I felt like a rare and precious tropical fruit being transported palace-ward for the delectation of a king!

When we reached home, I still had no idea what was in store for me. I didn't even get suspicious when I realized that Daddy and I were the only two people left in the entire house. The servants had all vanished. I asked Daddy where they were.

"Oh," Daddy cavalierly explained, "I gave them a thousand dollars and told them to keep themselves amused till tomorrow. Tonight I want to have my little girl all to myself."

I supposed he meant he wanted us to be alone so we could have a serious conversation, so I could tell him about school, about my class, my friends....

What a sap I was!

It was getting on toward evening now, and Daddy asked me if I was hungry. This in itself was a first-at our house, dinner had always been served when he was hungry-nobody else's appetite mattered. But tonight he was consulting me. I was flattered, and I told him I was beginning to get hungry.

"Well, then, Lara, my dear, sweet little daughter, why don't you run upstairs and have a nice relaxing little bath. It'll ease your cramps. Then you can change into a nice soft pretty little dress, and you and Daddy will have a nice little dinner together. How does that sound?"

It sounded wonderful and I told him so. Never had I felt so pampered. And it didn't once occur to me that Daddy had ulterior motives. Actually, when speaking of Daddy, "ulterior motives" is sort of redundant-ulterior was the only sort of motive he ever had.

In any case, I went upstairs and ran my bath. I stripped out of my clothes, put on a bathrobe, sprinkled some bubble-bath under the faucet, and got ready to climb in. Downstairs, I could hear Daddy whistling while he rattled pots and pans-I'd never before known him to cook a meal. I was thunderstruck.

The bath water was hot, and when I first stepped into it, it burned my feet and gave me chills all up my legs. My tummy felt slightly bloated and achy, and I was more aware of the area between my legs than I had ever been before. It seemed to generate a strange humming warmth, a disconcerting sensitivity which, once I'd discovered my own sexuality, would become a treasured capacity, but which now confused me. I was eager to get into the hot water, hoping that the heat would take away the ache and still the throbbing. Little by little, I lowered myself down into the tub, accustoming myself to the temperature with each submersion of the increasingly tender flesh. By the time I'd managed to dip my buttocks in, I was pretty used to it.

But still, when my loins first hit the water, I had to adjust all over again. That little pocket, which I'd never given that much thought to before today, now suddenly seemed to be the focus of attention, no matter what I did. Far from helping me forget about it, the warm water only heightened the sensitivity of that part of me. True, the heat stilled the cramps, but now that I was surrounded by liquid, I was more aware of the liquid inside me, the secret pooling of blood and other woman-juices whose existence I'd never even guessed at. The warm water seemed to increase my flow, and I noticed that a gradually spreading pool of pink had formed between my legs.

I luxuriated in the tub, lolling, basking in all the attention I'd been receiving. The kitchen noises occasionally wafted up to me, and I smiled at the flattering thought of Daddy preparing a meal for me. Lazily, I washed, and as I dragged the washcloth along my skin, I realized that my period affected other parts of me besides my vagina. My breasts were tender and, everything being relative, enlarged. My nipples were pinker than they'd been the day before, and they thrummed slightly, giving off heat, as if I had a very localized fever. Only gradually did I realize the full extent of the physiological upheaval going on within me-and I was incredibly happy to be home with my Daddy Dearest while I was going through it, having his care and understanding to support me.

I climbed out of the tub and patted myself dry. Glancing at myself in the mirror, I noticed that I had a very pretty flush on my face-whether this was due to the heat of the bath, or whether it was yet another side-effect of my period, I really couldn't say. But I must say I looked pretty. I slipped into my robe and crossed the hall to my bedroom to change for dinner.

Standing there in my bedroom on the first evening of my womanhood, I found myself facing the eternal female dilemma-what should I wear? I felt so pretty, and so grateful to Daddy, that I wanted to wear something nice, something that would make him proud of me. I decided that the plain little dress I'd brought with me from school wasn't special enough, and I picked a fancier one out of my closet. It was a yellow and white check, very springy, as befitted the occasion, since my life was in its budding springtime. The dress had adorable little shoulder straps which supported a lacy bodice. Strangely, I'd never before given a moment's thought to the reason why the bodices of dresses were often fancy or lacy; but now, in a flash of intuition, I realized that it was that way in order to draw attention to the breasts. Breasts-my own little buds hardly deserved the name; aside from which, the thought of breasts had no sexual connotations for me yet-they were just part of what made a girl pretty. So it seemed fitting to wear the pretty yellow and white dress with the lacy bodice. Under the dress, I wore a fresh pair of clean white cotton panties, and under the panties I wore one of the tiny cotton pads that the school nurse had given me that afternoon-the pad felt bulky and foreign between my legs, and yet there was a certain pleasure in wearing it, it was a confirmation of my maturity.

I slipped into a pair of plain white shoes with little square heels, and then I brushed my hair. By the time I walked downstairs to meet my Daddy Dearest, I must say that I looked like a walking, breathing example of pubescent perfection. (I have asked myself many times if what happened that night was partly my fault, if I acted unconsciously seductive. But no, I'm sure that Daddy's mind was made up long before he actually saw me coming down the stairs.)

"Ah, Lara," Daddy said as I poked my head into the kitchen, "don't you look lovely. Quite the young lady."

I blushed and beamed. "Do you need any help with dinner, Daddy?"

"Oh no, honey," he purred. "You just relax. Everything's taken care of. I was just chilling the champagne."

"Oh Daddy!" I bubbled. "Champagne?" I had never before even been allowed to taste the stuff. Daddy had always made a point of saying how bad alcohol was for children, and he never gave me a drop. My own secret suspicion had always been that he simply wanted it all for himself. Until tonight.

"Of course champagne," he said. "Nothing else would do for a night like tonight. Now, you go out into the dining room, and I'll join you in just a minute or two."

"Can I set the table at least?" I asked.

"Oh, all right," he said, with a twinkle in his eye.

But when I went out into the dining room, I saw that the table was already set! Daddy had laid out our best china, our finest silver, our thinnest crystal, and our most elegant linen napkins-all in honor of me! Graceful candles burned silently in a pair of matched antique candelabra. And, as promised, the festive green bottle of champagne was chilling in an embossed silver ice-bucket, the bottle's swan-like neck suavely wrapped in a crisp white cloth. Hardly able to suppress my delighted giggles, I took my place at the foot of the table. I felt like a princess. It was the happiest night of my life.

In a couple of minutes, Daddy entered from the kitchen. Somehow, in the midst of preparing dinner, he had managed to find time to change into a dinner jacket, wax his moustache, and comb his wavy salt-and-pepper hair. He looked incredibly handsome, the exemplar of the distinguished, charming-and, as I was to learn soon enough, utterly ruthless-older man. I understood why the movie fans swooned here was a man who radiated confidence, strength, and sensuality. Sensuality especially, though I didn't quite know what that meant at the time. Daddy was carrying a platterful of meat-more than a platterful, though that's another thing I didn't figure out till later. The meat was well-done, nice and dry and leathery, just the way I liked it. He leaned close over me to put a steak on my plate-I could smell his cologne.

After serving the steak, he brought out roast potatoes, asparagus tips, and popovers-all my favorite foods. He served me, then himself, and finally he took his seat opposite me. Then, as a climax to all these elegant preparations, he popped the champagne and poured us each a glass. My eyes misted over with tears of happiness as he proposed a toast:

"To your womanhood, Lara-may it provide the tie that binds us closer together than fathers and daughters hardly ever get."

I tasted the champagne-just like they say in the movies, the bubbles got up my nose. But it was delicious, and I felt myself getting almost instantaneously tipsy-my system, after all, was virgin, so far as alcohol was concerned.

During dinner we chatted more pleasantly and more relaxed than I can ever remember. I daintily sipped my champagne, and Daddy considerately refilled my glass after every swallow, so that I seemed to be making no headway whatsoever. This, of course, encouraged me to make my sips a bit more hearty. By the end of dinner, the bottle of champagne was empty, and I was pretty drunk. I'm quite sure that Daddy polished off his half of the bubbly, but it didn't seem to affect him at all. Compared to the doses of alcohol he was used to, half a bottle of wine was a mere drop in the ocean. He was still in perfect control.

After dinner, he offered me a brandy. This was another new experience for me-and it wasn't as easy to handle as the champagne. When I raised the snifter to my lips, swirling the brandy around in the bottom of the huge glass, as I'd seen Daddy do so many times, the fumes practically brought tears to my eyes-they burned the inside of my nose. Still, I was playing the part of the sophisticated young lady, and I tried to drink it. As I sipped my way cautiously along, it suddenly occurred to me that Daddy was observing me very closely, as if trying to gauge whether I was drunk enough for ... for what? I didn't know, and yet a certain uneasiness was beginning to move through me. I thought of the warmth between my legs, the feverish pinkness of my tender nipples, the mysterious ooze that sprang from between my legs-true, those things gave me a wonderful new strength, a wonderful new prettiness-but they also made me vulnerable in a way I'd never been vulnerable before. They opened passages that had never yet seen the light of day. Something told me that I had to be careful now....

But with all that alcohol in me, it was impossible to be careful. Besides, I was with my own father, my Daddy Dearest-it was unthinkable that he would take advantage of me, that he had anything but the most innocent sort of celebration in mind....Why then did he look at me that way?

Suddenly Daddy's handsome face became dreamy, nostalgic. "You know, Lara," he said in a beautifully modulated voice, "it seems like only yesterday you were a little girl. I used to rock you on my knee-do you remember?"

"Yes, Daddy," I said, my voice a little thick with drink. "I remember."

"You used to like it so much," he said.

"Yes," I answered, and suddenly I got a crystal-clear memory of the feel of the coiled spring he carried in his lap, the spring that I bounced up against when he tumbled me down his thighs. It occurred to me in a flash that there must be some correspondence between that spring and the place where I was bleeding-it was his lap and my lap, and increasingly, those places seemed to be the focus of things-they had to go together somehow.

"Why don't you sit on my lap now, Lara?" he said in a coaxing tone. "Just for old times' sake. Come. We'll go over to the couch."

Rising from his chair, he came around the table toward me. Suddenly I was afraid. And yet I also craved his warmth-he was so handsome, so strong, seemingly so gentle. He held his hand out toward me. I felt that if I took his hand, anything might happen, good or bad. But if I didn't take his hand, then what? Would he become angry? Would it mean the end of this wonderful evening, of his attention toward me, of his charming sweetness? Besides, he was only asking me to sit on his lap-it might be nice. And if there was something he wanted, I figured he would take it anyway, whether it was offered or not.

I took his hand. He led me into the living room and sat down on the sofa, motioning for me to sit down on his lap. Primly, carefully, I smoothed the full skirt of my yellow and white dress. Then I slowly lowered my bottom down across his thighs, side-saddle. Instantly I felt the warmth of his legs. The warmth was soothing against me, but it made me more aware of the humming liquid ache deep in my belly. It felt nice to be sitting there with him; it gave me a welcome reminder of our former closeness-but I felt some sort of intuitive danger signal go off in my brain. I tried to rise, but Daddy had slipped his arm around my waist, and he held me right where I was. The thing is, he didn't seem, to be using force. It's not like I was thrashing around, trying to get away, and he was keeping me pinned-it was subtler than that, and harder to fight against. He was still being warm and charming.

"There, there," he said, exerting just enough pressure to hold me still. "This is how we used to do it. I used to rock you like so"-he now began the rhythmic raising and lowering of his knees, jostling my already churning insides-"and then I used to lift my legs and pull you down just like this!" He raised his knees, making a sliding-board out of his strong thighs, and the smooth cloth of my pretty dress slid easily along his trousers, sending me slipping down toward his lap. The "spring" was still there-but now I didn't bounce off it and recoil. I was too heavy for that. My hips simply lay against it, pressing and being pressed.

And now I really started to panic. It seemed that all of a sudden I knew too much, more than I wanted to know, as if my woman's intuition started from nowhere and came to full bloom in a matter of hours. Suddenly I knew that Daddy's "spring" was his erect penis. Suddenly I knew that he was taking a most unfatherly pleasure from having me on his lap. And suddenly I knew that he intended to seduce me, to deflower me on the very day I was entering what should have been a lyrical and patient adolescence....

Again I tried to slink out of his grasp, and again he held me fast. The struggle was less subtle now. I no longer cared about offending him, I only wanted to escape. He no longer cared if he frightened me-I was frightened already, despite the champagne, the brandy, the sweet-talking. It was getting closer to an out and out rape, with Daddy's strong hands clamping down tight on the yielding flesh of my hips, holding me tight against his throbbing lap.

"You know," he said, his face reddening from the effort of hanging on to me, "it's truly miraculous, a girl's growth into womanhood. Why, I remember your tiny nipples when you were a little girl-I'll bet they're getting bigger now, and pinker. Why don't you show them to me?"

I tried to answer No, but the word caught in my throat. The horror of what was happening was getting through to me at last, and I simply couldn't talk. Now I understood the empty house, the nice dinner, the champagne-he might as well have been seducing some hot-to-trot starlet-harlot-but no, it was his own daughter! I was revolted, and yet my will was sapped....

I was strangely numb when he started fumbling with the bodice of my dress. Experienced seducer though he was, his hands still trembled as he committed this ultimate transgression. My breasts had never been touched before, except in the most incidental way. But now my father's fingertips explored them thoroughly, stroked and pinched the rubbery nubs, traced out the subtle swellings. Despite myself, I felt a reluctant pleasure-a pleasure that co-existed with abject revulsion. I grew faint, but the gift of unconsciousness was denied me-I was awake, I knew what he was doing....His fingers probed and appraised, and as the endless moments passed, I felt his lap growing lumpier and lumpier beneath me, and I felt that somehow it might penetrate me even then, even with both of us dressed, casually sitting there on the sofa....

I don't know how long he lingered on my tiny breasts-drunk and dizzy as I was, time had no meaning. I only know that at some point the scene of his attention shifted-now he was zeroing in toward my lap. He worked toward it from above and from below-one hand stroked my tummy-still outside my virginal little checkered dress-while the other caressed my rump-my pelvis had barely begun to broaden, and my father could almost cup my hips in his giant masculine hand!

I knew nothing of the mechanics of sex, you understand, and yet, simply from the alignment of my father's hands, I knew where the action was heading-he was making a pincers movement toward my crotch. But, so total was my naivete that I honestly did not know what he intended to do when he got there!

Even when my Daddy Dearest's hand finally came down and clamped itself around the crotchpiece of my cotton panties-even then I didn't know. However, he was not content to stay outside my panties now he wanted to circumvent the narrow strip of cloth, and feel my young womanhood directly! This seemed to me a transgression far more repugnant than anything that had gone before....A young girl's loins, you see, are a source of both wonder and of extreme embarrassment-the early growth of pubic hair, the fleshing out of the genital tissues-these are matters of shame to most pubescent females. In normal situations, it takes years for a girl to grow psychologically accustomed to these physical changes, and during the period of adjustment, she shares her physical secrets with no one. When she finally takes a lover-under normal conditions-she's already had time to get comfortable with her body. And the lover is someone she trusts, someone she feels will not humiliate her....That's how it should be. But here I was, having my shameful secrets ferreted out on the very day that the darkest secret of all had first been whispered-and it was father, at whose hands I had known humiliation and sadistic punishments, who was doing the probing. It was horrible, but I was powerless to resist....

I'll never forget the first feel of his fingertips against my exposed labia. I had always thought that his hands were remarkably soft, but, pressing against the still tender tissues of my vulva, they now seemed rough and scratchy. So sensitive was my never-before touched flesh, that I almost seemed able to discern his fingerprints, as if his mark was being branded into me, never to be erased. By now, my body had grown thoroughly rigid. I sat perfectly still on his lap-escape was impossible, the thought of participation was insanely grotesque-the only alternative was passive acceptance. And so my legs parted mechanically as Daddy coaxed my thighs apart with the pressure of his massive hands. Obedient to his signals, I raised my bottom slightly as he yanked my panties down over my hips, down my legs, over my shoes.

Now that my panties were gone, Daddy Dearest not only felt me, but also looked at me. In a way, the looking was even harder to bear than the touching. I felt that my wispy pubic hair was some sort of shameful deformity. I thought that the crack at the base of my belly was a mark of incompleteness, an irreparable imperfection....I cringed as he appraised me.

Then he lifted me off his lap. I had no idea what he intended to do with me. He lifted me gently, but at the same time kept a firm hold of my wrist, discouraging any thought of flight. I stood stiffly by and awaited orders.

The orders were that I was to lie down on the rug, on my back, with my dress pulled up and my legs apart. I suppose I was in a state of shock, because all I could think of when Daddy told me to do that, was that I'd get blood on the rug and Daddy would probably make me clean it up. Since I had no conception of the ordeal I was about to be put through, my mind helplessly went on to other things.

But I did lie down. I remember the feel of the rug against my buttocks-it was scratchy, but not unpleasantly so. It made my skin itch, and at the same time it relieved the itch....My mind wandered. I looked up at Daddy. From my worm's eye perspective, he seemed frighteningly big, infinitely big. I looked at his shoes, and then my eyes followed the crisp crease of his slacks, up past his knees, past the place where my blood had stained the cloth, to his crotch, which bulged and quivered behind the strained zipper. Above his waist, his torso seemed to stretch clear to. the ceiling, his broad waist and big chest and hefty shoulders, topped by that kingly, cruel face and that distinguished head of hair. He seemed not a man, but a monument-and I suppose that's how he saw himself, as an idol demanding sacrifices. And I was the sacrifice, laid out on the altar, loins bleeding as though from a sacred wound, ready for the carnal ceremony.

Impatiently, standing precariously first on one leg and then the other, Daddy stepped out of his shoes. Then he pulled down his socks. Then he started fumbling with his belt. Now I was really frightened. It finally got through to me that in some unspeakably intimate way, our bodies were to be coupled-and it seemed that there was an irreconcilable difference in scale between us. I, on the floor, seemed so small, so closed, so unready; he, towering above me, seemed so large, so imperious, so insistent.

My fear increased tenfold as I watched Daddy divest himself of his trousers. First I saw only his strong hairy belly, the muscular bulk of which was frightening in itself. But then I saw his penis, and my terror was complete. How strange it was to see that "spring" after all these years! I'd always regarded it as a kind of toy, a secret toy that, though always part of the games my Daddy and I played, was never spoken of, never mentioned, never exposed. But now here it was in its awful concrete nakedness, a cruel expanse of skin and vein, a throbbing weapon. Looking up at the thing's underside, I gasped at the size of it. His scrotal sac seemed impossibly large, ponderously heavy. His nest of pubic hair seemed large and dense enough to house a family of hawks. But it was the shaft itself that held my fascinated interest-I couldn't imagine that my narrow body would ever be able to accommodate it....

In his rapacious eagerness to get at me, Daddy didn't take time to slip out of his dinner jacket, let alone his shirt. Naked from the waist down, formally attired from the waist up, he dropped to his knees in front of me on the rug. As he came closer, his huge bobbing manhood seemed to take up my entire field of vision, as when a sudden close-up fills the whole broad screen at the movies. He crawled between my legs, forcing my ankles apart with his hairy knees. Now I looked up at his face, and never had I seen more clearly the gaping cruelty, the moral abyss, that underlay his handsome surface-if it's true that the Devil has the power to take on pleasing shapes, then my father at that moment was Satan himself! The lust fairly dripped from him. His breath came quickly, in short wheezing gasps. From my vantage point underneath him, I could see the tiny hairs in his nose, whipping around as if in a storm. He smelled of liquor and cologne, and of my blood. In his evil single-mindedness, he was truly devilish.

And yet even he apparently was not without some withered remnant of remorse, some faint inkling of the enormity of his crime. For, as he lowered himself closer toward me, as I felt the hot nearness of his member approaching my loins, he whispered the pathetic disclaimer: "It's all right, Lara. Your mother and I are divorced."

That was small comfort, I assure you.

Frozen with terror, I lay there underneath him, feeling his relentless approach. Was it the heat that radiated from his loins, or was it some subtler sense, that tracked the impending movements of his penis like radar? I only know that it seemed like an eternity from the time he began his descent until the moment I actually felt the tip of his manhood against my bloodstained pubis. I could not believe the size of it!

It covered me from the tippy-top of my orifice, almost all the way down to my anus. My assumption-if my mind was clear enough at that hideous moment to form assumptions-was that he intended to press against me-the idea that he might actually press into me, seemed too monstrous to be possible....

But press he did, and, as I squirmed and groaned, he actually did make headway into me. I felt a searing, tearing pain as my Daddy Dearest parted the tissues that had never before been parted, as he invaded the precincts that had never before been entered. I felt as if my entire body were being split, as if I would end the evening in two sheared-off halves, my spilled blood and entrails staining the clean white rug....I think I screamed. I can't be sure if the howls were outward, or if it was only a howling pain inside me....The tip of him, having plunged past the outermost restraints, was up against the membrane now-though I had no idea of my own internal geography, I could visualize the thin tissue being painfully torn from its moorings in my sensitive vaginal walls....

I was so intensely focused on my own discomfort, that I was only sporadically aware of Daddy-of his maniacally clenched features, his animal-like gasping, his bullish strength as he pushed farther into me....

And then, finally, my restraining wall let go and Daddy plunged in so deeply that I felt the tightness in my throat. Individual pulses of pain were lost now in an overwhelming tide of fullness, a monstrous unnatural fullness that I felt would never leave me clean and empty again. He was moving on me now, bouncing and rocking in a rhythm far more urgent and uncontrolled than the gentle rhythms with which he used to rock me on his knee....Then, at last, as a crowning agony to the thrusting and the stretching, I felt a scalding hot injection being shot deep into my insides, a throbbing spurt of viscous liquid that corresponded to Daddy's most vigorous thrusts, and which left him drained and still, except for his heavy breathing....

He no longer held himself above me now, but let his full weight come to rest on top of me. I was pinned, I couldn't move. The tearing pain was gone from my loins, and in its place was a general burning ache. I was sobbing. I knew I'd been through something horrible, even if I didn't yet know the name for it. I cried and cried.

It seemed a long time before Daddy became aware of my sobbing. Then, in a feeble and yet strangely touching attempt to comfort me, he gently stroked my forehead, pushing back my dampened hair.

"What's the matter, Lara?" he asked. "Are you worried about the rug?"

I couldn't answer. I only cried.

"There, there," he said. "Don't worry. We'll have the house re-carpeted tomorrow."

CHAPTER TEN

I suppose that defloration is a major event in any woman's life, but it was particularly pivotal in mine. Overnight, I became not only a sexual being, but an aberrant into the bargain. Not, of course, that I'd become a pervert of my own free will-but still, I'd been penetrated by my father, I'd received his semen. I bore the taint.

At first I didn't know what to make of it all. By this time, after the talk in the dorm, I knew that what had transpired wasn't exactly normal. Maybe I would have been better off if I didn't know, if I thought that incest was a natural part in the life of every adolescent girl. But for better or worse, I had been made to understand that most girls only fantasize about being ravished by their daddies-it only actually happens to a select few.

Anyway, the next morning I was a mess. I woke up with dried blood caked between my thighs, an ache in my lower belly, and a hangover. It seemed I'd been introduced to several vices simultaneously, and was paying the price. Only gradually did the full memory of the night before come back to me-I remembered the coaxing, the resistance, the entrance, the climax, the grateful yet somehow regretful ending of this wrenching but strangely enticing encounter....I didn't know what would happen next.

I had assumed, of course, that I would return to school after the little "celebration." But then, that was before I'd realized what the celebration was going to consist of. Now it seemed that Daddy wasn't going to let me go back-he had asserted his possession of me in a new and final way. Something told me he wasn't about to let me out of his clutches. And I was right.

He told me of his plans over breakfast that day, in the early afternoon. I came to the table in a pretty blue dress. Strangely, I was more self-conscious about my looks than I had ever been before. I don't know if I specifically wanted to please him, or if it was only a more general, instinctual desire to be attractive now that I was a woman, now that sex had become one of my possibilities. In any case, Daddy seemed to approve of my appearance. As soon as he saw me, his face took on a rather lustful expression which, while it horrified me, also flattered me. Lust, however, was not the first business of the afternoon. There were other things to be discussed.

I sat down at the table and Daddy regarded me from his chair opposite. He looked very handsome, and more relaxed than he'd looked in a long time. Clearly, he'd found the defloration therapeutic. And when he spoke, there was a real tenderness in his voice. It was a paradoxical tenderness, of course-he had absolute power over me, and we both knew it, but as long as his dominion was unthreatened, he would try at least, to be gentle.

"How are you feeling this morning, Lara?" he asked. Out of a sense of compunction, I suppose, he did not make the question a specific reference to my sexual parts, but the meaning was clear enough. I'd washed my loins as soon as I'd awakened, and shortly after the drone in my uterus had ceased. I actually felt surprisingly good, alert and alive.

"Fine," I said. "And how are you?" As neutral as the question was, I was almost shocked to have to acknowledge that I was playing the coquette. What I was really asking him was whether he'd been satisfied with me the night before. Strange how readily a virgin picks up lovers' shorthand!

"Fine," he said, and the smile that accompanied the simple remark assured me that I'd been perfect for him. I suppose I should have been horrified by all this, but I must confess I wasn't We looked at each other for a moment, and then, in a sudden onset of shyness, I had to look away, down at my grapefruit.

Nervously I picked up my spoon and started going at the yummy citrus.

"We have some things to talk about, Lara," Daddy continued after a pause. I didn't say a word. My silence seemed to discomfit him a little, and I have to admit that I was pleased. It was my first realization of the power of a woman's silence. It seemed ironic that, even though Daddy had all the power-physically, financially-a little thing like a brief silence on my part could upset him. He cleared his throat and went on. "Yes, well. The first thing we should talk about is school." Again I was silent. I glanced up at him and was suddenly aware of the strength of my big blue eyes. Amazing things were happening. I don't know if it was hormonal or what-but all of a sudden, literally from minute to minute, I seemed to be catching on to the whole repertoire of feminine wiles.

It was Daddy who looked away this time! I could not believe I'd won a staring contest with him.

"Now, about school," he resumed. "Well, uh, things have sort of changed between us, Lara, and I don't intend to send you back."

"You mean you want to keep me here, where I'm available to you," I said. I don't exactly know where I got the nerve to put it that way. But it seemed that it was the moment for me to assert myself, to show Daddy that I had my share of the Stanford brazenness. Not that I thought it would get anywhere. Besides, I didn't even want to go back to school. After my adventure with Daddy, the halfhearted lesbianism of the dorm would seem pretty tame.

Anyway, Daddy squirmed a little when I said that.

I ate it up. "Well, yes," he said. "If you want to put it that way. I'll be frank, Lara-the time that you've been away at school hasn't been easy for me. Oh, I've had my fun, of course, but still-there was a certain intensity of emotion that just hasn't been here. Perhaps you're too young to understand-"

"I understand just fine," I interrupted. I wasn't going to have Daddy banging me one minute and then treating me like a little girl the next! It had to be one way or the other. I didn't so much mind being raped, but I couldn't stand being patronized.

"Of course, of course," Daddy said. "I didn't mean to offend you. But here it is in a nutshell, Lara. I'm not sending you back to school. I'll hire tutors and have you educated at home. Would that be all right with you?"

"Do I have a choice?"

"No."

"Well, then I guess it'll be fine," I said. I knew better than to get into a battle of wills with Daddy. Up to a point I could wrap him around my finger but only up to a point. I knew that he still had the capacity for ruthlessness-even toward me. Maybe especially toward me, because I was the person toward whom he had the strongest feelings. Besides, I can't deny that, in some ways at least, I was pleased that Daddy wanted me around. If you want to be judgmental, you can say the whole thing was sackbut think about it-how many people are ever desired that badly, needed that desperately? Incest isn't a taboo for nothing. It's a taboo because it deals with some of the strongest drives known to humankind. And you should think twice before damning anyone who succumbs to those fierce passions.

But I don't mean to preach. And I'm not trying to get Daddy off the hook. His taking of me was essentially an elegant rape, and I've always resented him for it. But nothing is ever that simple. He also gave me enormous pleasure, and a kind of closeness that few people ever know-which may be just as well.

Anyway, it was decided that I wasn't going back to boarding school. The chauffeur was sent to pick up the rest of my things. I never even went back to say goodbye to my former friends. I guess that was just as well-after what had happened, I don't know if I could have faced them. Either I would have melted in shame, or, to show off, I would have blabbed the story all over school, and who knows if anyone would have believed me.

Daddy seemed immensely relieved that I offered almost no resistance to the suggestion about leaving school. He was flattered by it. And I guess he should have been. The thing is, I did feel that life around the mansion would be more entertaining than life at school. You see, I have some of the Stanford adventuresomeness in me. I want to see what goes and be part of it-and if what goes on happens to be totally crazy, well, so be it.

Later that afternoon, when the chauffeur returned with my valises, I moved back into my old room. This was yet another issue. At first, Daddy wanted me to move into the master bedroom. This, I suppose, would have made certain things more convenient, but, however much he flaunted social conventions, Daddy did draw the line somewhere, and for appearance's sake, it was decided I should keep my own boudoir. Besides, that was how I wanted it. You have to keep in mind that I was still in many ways a child. True, I had been introduced to carnal matters, and had responded to the introduction with a shockingly sudden sophistication-but I cannot honestly say that the sophistication was thorough. No, it was only a veneer of ballsiness tacked over a tender and vulnerable soul. So I wanted to keep my own room, for fantasizing, for silent imaginings, maybe even for playing with dolls.

There was something melancholy about moving back into the room I had occupied as a little girl, as a little virgin. Everything about the decor was innocent. The wallpaper was white with little pink flowers. There were gaily painted shutters on the windows. There were childish pictures and prints on the walls. The furniture was enameled a cheery ivory color. And the bed was narrow and solitary. It was a bed made for innocent dreams and untroubled sleep. It had beautifully carved oak posts at the corners, and was topped by a luxurious velvet canopy. It was a bed intended for a pretty virgin princess, and I felt somehow guilty occupying it again. But then I comforted myself with the thought that, if I was no longer a princess, it was because I had become a queen!

Settling back into my old room took until dinnertime. Daddy, surprisingly considerate of my feelings, had left me alone during the intervening hours, realizing, I suppose, that it would be an ambivalent chore for me. But at dinnertime we were to be together again.

I was apprehensive, as you can well imagine. I didn't know how these things worked. I had no idea if last night's performance was to be repeated, or if it would be different this time, or if it would happen at all. I knew that I should be hoping that it wouldn't happen again, that it would never happen again, yet there was a certain curiosity in me that was more than simple curiosity. Whether or not I actually wanted it, I think I did expect it-and there's a thin line between those two things.

Well, when I went down to dinner, I immediately realized that there was to be nothing like the flattering lavishness of the night before. The table was elegantly laid, as it always was, but tonight it wasn't Daddy who was doing the cooking. The regular domestic staff was handling it, and while they did an excellent job, a certain note of intimacy was missing.

But there was still champagne, and Daddy was still charming. Though he still occasionally backslid into treating me like a child, from hour to hour he became more accustomed to the notion that I was a woman now, and he regarded me accordingly. He could actually be quite gallant.

Over dinner that night, I had an almost crushingly poignant realization. I suppose there comes a time in every child's life-whether or not the child is incestuous-when he or she realizes that they've somehow got the upper hand over their parents. The upper tip of that realization occurred to me that night. I don't mean that all of a sudden I was the boss-hardly. Daddy still held the reins. But looking at him across the table, I realized the one inescapable fact-he was getting older. And as he got older, I would get stronger. My strength would catch up to his and at some point I would pass him by. There was no joy in this realization, not even of the vindictive sort. I felt sorry for him, as amazing as that might sound. He'd raped me, turned my life upside down, taken away whatever chance of normalcy I might have had-but it was he who deserved sympathy. I almost began crying at the table. My father saw my eyes well up and, misunderstanding the cause of their fullness, asked me if I missed school. I shook my head no.

That night I made love to Daddy. I took the initiative. He seemed inclined to give me the night off-whether out of respect for my feelings or because he was simply tired, I don't know. But the realization I'd had over dinner made me want to do something for him. It was all very strange. I knew I should have hated him, and I did hate him, but I also loved him profoundly. In some strange way, I felt that my life was already so battered, that the only thing to do was to fully embrace the perversity-to embrace it so fully that it might achieve a sort of indirect purity.

So I led Daddy up to the bedroom. By taking the lead, I realized that I was depriving myself of the excuse of saying that I'd been forced, that I never wanted it. But I didn't need excuses. I felt I was better off without them. They'd only cloud the issue.

Needless to say, Daddy was surprised by my boldness. But he seemed to like it. He followed meekly as a lamb as I led him up the stairs. He made no advances of his own. He allowed me to help him out of his clothes. He was as placid as a mannequin as I divested him of his jacket and unbuttoned the studs of his shirt. When I pulled the shirt off, I saw the gray hairs mingling among the black on his chest, and my sympathies were renewed. I unzipped his pants. He had an erection but tonight there was no urgency in it. He was being passive and patient, marvelling quietly at the change that had come over his daughter/lover since the night before.

When Daddy was naked, I sat him quietly down on the edge of the bed, and undressed myself. It was important that, though I had undressed him, he should not undress me. I wanted it to be clear that I was doing this, setting the terms, making the offers. His eyes never left me as I slipped out of my dress and stood there in my rather incongruously innocent underthings. But his expression was not lustful-it was marvelling, almost mystical. I unhooked my bra-which I must confess I barely needed. My breasts were new and small, and so firm that they needed no support at all. They didn't budge, even when I ran. He looked at my bare torso, and I could feel his eyes. My nipples became taut. I slipped out of my panties. The panties were white cotton, as pure and straightforward as could be. I let them drop to the floor and then stepped out of them. Daddy's eyes shifted almost reluctantly to my pubis, as if, in the almost religiously perverse mood that had come over us, he could barely bring himself to behold it. But he did look-at the small mound with its half-mature covering of fur, the dimly visible cleft at the base of the belly, the secret place that fulfilled the sensual promise of the meeting of pale soft stomach and slightly plump thighs.

Then I got into bed beside Daddy. Things moved slowly. Unlike last night, when I needed coaxing, I went through all the steps lovingly, savoringly. The fear was gone, and with the fear the painful tightness. I must say I enjoyed it that night. And when it was over, I slept alongside Daddy in the huge bed in the master bedroom.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

And so it went. It was plenty weird, but on a day-today basis, it wasn't so different from a lot of marriages. Daddy went to work at the studio, and I stayed home. But instead of doing housework or listening to the radio, I had my tutors come in. I studied all the usual subjects, and probably got a much better education that I would have gotten at school. After work Daddy would come home, and just like any other couple, we'd spend the early evening asking each other about our days, occasionally being bored with the conversation, and so forth. When it was bedtime, we did what most couples do-though I daresay we did it considerably more often. Part of Daddy's desire for me, I suppose, was his desperate yearning for his own departing youth, and I guess I made him feel that he could perform as he had been able to as a young man. At this stage of my life, I had no way of gauging relative sexual performance, but it seemed to me that he did a passable job.

Anyway, that was the basic routine, but it wasn't always quite that simple. Daddy had always had a terrifically active social life, and he couldn't very well curtail it absolutely just because his thing was now incest. Politically, professionally, it would have been a disastrous thing for him to have done. You see, though Daddy was still handsome and popular, there was no getting around the fact that he was past his prime. He was at the age where it gets easier and easier to be forgotten. To avoid being forgotten, you've got to be visible. You've got to be at the right parties, you've got to be seen with the right people, you've got to make it clear that you're still in with the in crowd. You've got to show people you can still cut it socially-making the occasional witty remark, the occasional memorable gesture-and you've also got to demonstrate that you can still hack it sexually. The time-honored way to do this is to get yourself a young girlfriend, and instruct her to look thoroughly satiated at all times-or else. Well, Daddy had succeeded admirably in getting himself a young girlfriend, but the situation wasn't exactly the type he could flaunt in public. There are limits, after all, even in Hollywood.

The net result of all this was that, for a while at least, I was excluded from Daddy's social life. I wouldn't have minded this so much if I had a social life of my own, but I really didn't. The fact that I didn't go to school shut me away from my peers. And even if I did have more contact with kids my own age, I feel that there would have been an unbridgeable gap between us. Our experiences simply would have been different. Most girls my age would be agonizing over whether they should let their boyfriends kiss them on the cheek? on the mouth? with their tongues? Should they allow their breasts to be felt? Under the clothing, or only outside of it? Well, those questions, while they have definite importance in the lives of most teenage girls, had no application for me. I would have been an outsider. I would have felt myself above the little quibbles like that. Plus I had a deep dark secret to hide. No, it would have been all but impossible for me to have viable friendships of my own.

I was very isolated, and my isolation led me to resent Daddy's carousing. I was jealous-not sexually jealous, because, in the early days at least, I really don't think Daddy had much interest in bedding anybody else. I was simply jealous that he got to spend time with people, to chat, to dance, to party and I didn't.

So I started nagging him to include me in his socializing. At first he wouldn't even discuss it, and just shrugged me off whenever I brought up the subject. Later, when he realized I was quite serious, he did take the time to explain his feelings to me.

Socializing, he claimed, was not so much a pleasure as a chore for him. It was something he had to do-it came with the job of being a Hollywood personality. And for the socializing to be effective, he had to portray a certain image-it was all right to be a philanderer, a buggerer, a whorer, a polygamist-but it simply wasn't all right to be having an affair with one's teen-age daughter. It was as simple as that, and I would have to accept it.

But I wouldn't accept it. I deplore hypocrisy, and incest seemed to me an arbitrary place to draw the line. Why, I asked Daddy, if you can screw boys and other people's wives, can't you have a little warm affectionate fun with your own daughter? Daddy had no satisfactory answer to that, and replied simply that society's rules were society's rules, and whether or not we actually lived by them, it was a good idea at least to pretend that we did. That settled the issue for him, and he didn't want to talk any more about it.

He changed his tune, however, when I began showing my displeasure by withholding sexual favors. Time and again I turned my back to him which wasn't necessarily a rejection, though in this particular case it was. He'd coax, he'd plead, but though my own needs were very nearly as pressing as his-I'd refuse on principle. If our relationship was too reprehensible ever to see the light of day, then by Jove, we'd cut it short in the darkness of night. I myself wasn't thrilled about doing without sex, but I knew that eventually I'd get my way. So I'd hold my ground, and Daddy, disgruntled, would get up and trudge toward the bathroom to do his laundry by hand. It's a wrenching thing for a middle-aged man to have to masturbate, especially with the object of his longing right beside him in the bed.

It was a battle of attrition, but I knew I'd win. Finally, Daddy suggested a compromise. He agreed to start taking me to parties, on condition that we made every effort to conceal the true nature of our relationship. That meant no necking in public, no overt shows of desire, no innuendoes or double entendres. Daddy and I had become so free with each other that I felt it would be an effort, but it was worth a try-anything to get out of the house. So we developed a strategy-Daddy was to say he was grooming me for stardom, that I was an up-and-coming debutante, and he wanted to get me into the right circles as soon as possible. By Hollywood standards, that seemed a perfectly reasonable explanation.

I still remember the first party he took me to. It was a humdinger, a three-hundred-person bash at the estate of one of Tinseltown's most successful producers. The party was being held in the honor of the opening of a new picture, and so the ground rules were pretty obvious. You had to compliment everyone connected with the film, from leading lady down to gaffer. You had to say that you loved them in-----(and here you put in the name of one of their other pictures, if you could think of any), but they really outdid themselves in (and here you put in the name of the present picture). Then you told them you especially admired the way they handled such and such a scene. What made this obsessive complimenting a real challenge, was that the movie hadn't been released yet, and no one had the foggiest idea what it was about! But that didn't really matter. You just had to keep the compliments going. The people didn't listen that closely, beyond absorbing the basic fact that they were being praised. Aside from remembering the compliments, there was one other thing to remember-you had to smile at all times, because you never knew when a flashbulb was going to go off and a picture would be snapped. Newspapermen and screen-mag types always haunted these parties, and if they got an unflattering picture of you, you could be in big trouble. Readers nationwide would glance at the snapshot and say-Her? Oh, she's not that pretty after all. And your career could go right down the tubes. These parties were serious business, and I began immediately to understand why Daddy described them as a professional chore rather than as a pleasure.

Still, for all the pressure and the posturing, there was an undeniable glamor and excitement about that party. Everybody was there. It was like being backstage at an extravaganza. You could hobnob with people you'd never before seen in three dimensions.

Among all these luminaries, I was proud to see that Daddy held his own (since the ground rules said he couldn't hold mine). He was overawed by no one though he did a lot of overawing himself. He had become something of a living legend. But this was an equivocal situation, since it referred to his age and his tenure, as well as his popularity and charisma. He was one of the grand old men, though he wasn't, strictly speaking, old. Still, he handled himself with terrific poise. And when he introduced me to people, I did all I could to live up to the Stanford image of self-assurance, easy charm, and understated arrogance. I was on best behavior, and so was Daddy.

But the best behavior did get to be something of a strain, after the newness of the party circuit wore off. On the first go-round, it was easy enough to play the part of the wide-eyed young deb being introduced into society by her smoothy of a Dad, but that act soon got stale. The parties themselves got pretty stale-there were always the same old jokes, the same interchangeable gossip, with only the names changed from week to week, the same backbiting and barely veiled opportunism. Once the initial excitement wore off, the parties simply weren't all that much fun. Now, I realize that that statement must seem unbelievable to anyone who has not seen Hollywood from the inside, and who just assumes that film industry shindigs are the last word in glamor and wit-but believe me, looked at from the inside, it's not much different from a Wednesday night Mah Jongg game. It's always the same after a while.

Anyway, as Daddy and I got bored, it became increasingly difficult to hide our romance. We were frankly more interested in each other than in the rest of the company, and, inevitably, that preference began to show. We never did anything outrageous at the parties-we never got caught groping in the bushes or feeling each other up in the pool or anything like that. But still, I guess we were giving certain subtle signs as to the nature of our relationship, and it wasn't long before the rumor mills started working on us.

We caught wind of this only gradually. After all, rumors of incest were pretty strong stuff even by Tinseltown standards, and people did use at least a modicum of discretion. But the truth will out, as they say, and we soon started overhearing whispers that were not intended for our ears. At first, Daddy found this very distressing. Libertine though he was, he did have some sense of shame. I, on the other hand, had had my moral sense so screwed up from the very beginning of my early life, that I really couldn't get all that worked up. If someone had come up to me and accused me of having sex with my father, I think my most natural reaction would have been to shrug and say, "Doesn't everybody?" I knew, of course, that everybody didn't, but still-it just didn't seem to be that big a deal. Hollywood, you see, had made me something of a moral primitive.

For all Daddy's concern, however, the rumors about us didn't seem to change anybody's opinion of him. They already knew that Daddy was capable of just about every sexual perversion in the books-this new wrinkle was only one more bit of superfluous evidence. What people didn't seem to understand, however, was why Daddy picked me for a partner. True, I was young, pretty, and downright delectable, if I may say so myself-but what advantage could Daddy possibly gain from having me as a lover? I was neither rich, nor powerful, nor well-connected, except through him-none of the formulas that explained Daddy's previous choices of lovers seemed to apply to his liaison with me.

But people failed to understand the dual pathos that was at the root of Daddy's incestuous longings.

First of all, I think he was trying to recapture, through me, the wife he had lost, the woman he fended off loving till it was too late. Then there was the fact of his growing old. Laying himself down alongside my fresh unwrinkled skin, he could imagine that his flesh too was new and unspoiled. Similarly, bringing me to untold heights of sexual discovery, molding my unjaded flesh in his image, could perhaps trick his own flesh into forgetting that it had already done everything, felt everything, been through the mill in every way possible.

And then there was one other simple but powerful motivation in Daddy's choice-I was available, close to home. I didn't have to be sought after, didn't have to be courted. As Daddy grew older, you see, he didn't quite have the energy he once had had. To some degree, he had to curtail his activities. He was too driven to cut down on his work schedule. And he couldn't cut down on his social schedule because, as he said, parties were a professional obligation. Where he could economize, however, was in the energy he expended seeking out lovers. Previously, he had been constantly on the prowl. True, with his reputation and good looks, prowling was never difficult-but still, it took a certain amount of time and will. Then there was the strain of constant first-time performances. First time out with a new lover is always a little trying-you want so much to do a memorable job, to make a good-and deep-impression. It's a little wearing. With me on hand, Daddy didn't have to knock himself out quite so much-though I must say he never spared himself, and extended himself to great lengths to keep me satisfied. It was just that, being a family member and all, he knew I would make allowances if he was tired or whatever.

So what it comes down to, is that it was an utterly wacky situation, but not without certain advantages.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Let us now skip ahead a few years, to the time of my eighteenth birthday. I'll try to give a brief account of what happened in between.

First of all, Daddy's career, for the first time, entered a period of real decline. Needless to say, he took this hard. His drinking became more and more of a problem, and his sadistic impulses came closer and closer to the explosion point, even toward me but I'll get to that in time. The reasons for his decline were simple. For one thing, the public was just getting tired of looking at his face. They'd been watching him for two decades, first as a brashly boyish youth, then as a masterfully self-assured young man, then as a debonair and twinkle-eyed seducer, then as a still-appealing but more tangential uncle-figure. But, in Hollywood, faces have a way of outliving their usefulness. Styles change, the public's opinion as to what constitutes handsomeness is not constant. For example, James Dean would not have been considered good-looking in the thirties, but in the fifties, he was it. Conversely, my father was the thirties' ideal of male beauty-but the fifties called for a rawer, more severe handsomeness-and Daddy, approaching fifty himself, was too soft edged to fit the image.

There's also the question of Daddy's acting. Daddy fancied himself a marvelous actor, but if the truth be known, he wasn't. What he was, was a marvelous screen personality. Now, given the schmaltzy star oriented filmmaking of the thirties, that was good enough. But in the fifties, when the accent was on naturalistic acting, on nuanced, gut-grabbing performances a la Brando, Daddy couldn't quite cut the mustard. He could no longer get by simply playing himself. And he'd never really learned another role. He'd never had to.

So then, time was passing him by, and he began being obsessed with the idea of stopping it. But of course, it's impossible to stop time. The best you can do is to refuse to acknowledge that it is passing-and this strategy, while it may have its comforts, is actually close to madness. But that's the strategy Daddy adopted.

Since he was no longer considered a big deal at parties, he all but stopped going to parties. Since his old friends and colleagues no longer fawned on him, currying him for favors, he drifted away from old friends and colleagues. Year by year, the formerly gregarious Drew Stanford became a recluse. Similarly, since he no longer had a place in, or even quite understood, movies, he stopped paying attention to them. He had a theater installed in the mansion, and he bought or borrowed prints of old films from the various studios, and those were the only movies we saw.

As I said, Daddy's drinking grew more severe during this time, which is not at all surprising. Despite all his faults, Daddy was, after all, an intelligent and alert man, and he needed alcohol to dull his wits if he was going to be able to believe his own ruse about the non-passing of time. The problem was, he was not a cheerful drunk, at least some of the time. He was horribly erratic. There were times when drink would seem to put him in an utterly euphoric state-a state in which all was well with the world, and he seemed even to have the strength to deal with his own decline. But then, suddenly, unpredictably, he would plunge into the most lugubrious depressions, a gloom so deep and so settled that it seemed he would never emerge. When he did emerge from those moods, it was generally into a fit of erotic sadism. It seemed that nothing short of the most intimate sort of wounding, the most secret and galling humiliations, were sufficient to settle his score with the world that was passing him by.

Even discounting his out and out sadistic acts, the changes that were coming over Daddy made things very difficult for me. The early years of our liaison, for all their perversity, were actually rather lyrical. We plunged into our transgression with at least a species of joy. But the lyricism soon went sour, as we realized what a fix we had put ourselves into. Our sin isolated us from the world at large. It made us almost wholly dependent on each other-and as Daddy grew more and more cranky, and as I grew more and more mature, curious, and independent-minded, the burden on both of us was enormous.

As Daddy sank deeper into drink and depression, I became almost a nursemaid. I cared for him, comforted him, and was also on call for his increasingly sporadic and unpredictable sexual wants. There were times, even now, when he would make love tenderly-as tenderly as a man does when he fears he may be sharing the body of a loved one for the last time. There was a sense of wonder in the way he touched me then, as he fondled the breasts that had now grown to maturity-that he had nurtured to maturity-as he plumbed the loins that were now maturely draped in fur, and whose inner contours he had solely shaped. His gentleness at those moments was flattering and satisfying. But he could as easily turn cruel. It was as if I must be punished for being young while he was old, for having life ahead of me while the best of his was past. At times like that, he would have no compunction about slapping me, spanking me, using a belt on me as if I were a naughty child. In his most hateful moments, he would find ways to torment my nipples, my thighs. Even my loins were not safe from his heartless need to castigate. There were times I feared he would injure me permanently, disfigure me. Perhaps that was what he wanted-to make me unfit for anyone else, to have the cruel satisfaction of knowing that my sex life would end the moment his did. But young flesh is resilient, and he was able to do me no permanent damage. The welts healed. The bruises lost their discoloration. Though he found unnatural ways to stretch me, my contours always returned to normal. I knew I was still suitable for other lovers.

Though I must say that other lovers, in the early years at least, almost never crossed my mind, or Daddy's. One nice thing about a really perverse sexual relationship, is that it's so intense and all consuming as not to leave any room for promiscuity. I'm proud to report that the early years of our incestuous relationship were the only monogamous years in Daddy's life! His marriage had, if anything, heightened his capacity for multiplicity. And, in the years of his second bachelorhood, he changed partners more often than most men change socks. But he was true to me. For a few years at least.

Eventually, however, he started fooling around. My vanity was somewhat wounded, but I really couldn't get that upset, because it wasn't other women he was after-he simply resumed his former habit of cornholing young men. I recognized this as yet one more rather desperate attempt on Daddy's part to reclaim fled youth, and it didn't bother me all that much (But I was very insistent that Daddy wash thoroughly before coming near me.)

The older Daddy got, the younger were the men he preferred. In his earlier bouts of pederasty, he would take anyone under twenty-five. As he neared fifty, however, he made twenty-one the cutoff point. And when he passed fifty, he all but excluded anyone who was past the age of twenty. I don't know if Daddy himself was aware of the strictness with which he kept to these parameters-but I observed who came and went, and I knew just how old they were.

Well, those of you who believe in blind justice will be pleased to hear that my first infidelity was the direct result of Daddy's own. As a matter-of-fact, my very first non-incestuous lover was one of Daddy's boyfriends!

If this seems un-likely, you have to consider the fluidity of sex roles in Tinseltown. With some exceptions, there are not many people there who are permanently straight or permanently gay. The role one plays has to do with age, wealth, and professional standing. Daddy himself was perfectly typical of the usual pattern. As a very young man-gorgeous but broke-his natural (everything being relative) place was on the receiving end of homosexual linkings. He gave more pleasure than he received, but as a tradeoff, he made money and connections. Once established as a star, he had the luxury of heterosexuality. Being with women, he took more pleasure than he gave, except incidentally-and, into the bargain, it cost him almost nothing in either money or favors. Then, as he aged, the cycle was completed-he was now on the protruding end of sodomy and fellatio, and though he got the lion's share of pleasure, it cost him. He paid his young lovers now, and even tried to do professional favors for the ones who especially pleased him. But if they thought that a plug (no pun intended) from Drew Stanford instantly made them, they were sadly mistaken-Drew Stanford was simply no longer a name to conjure with. Daddy often lost lovers once they realized that.

In any case, as Daddy's preoccupation with youthful male buttocks grew more pronounced, two things happened-the house was increasingly filled with beautiful young men, and I received less and less of Daddy's erotic attentions. The sum of these two circumstances was inevitable-I'd take a lover from among my father's catamites. Now, I should make it clear that the men Daddy favored were not of the effete, limp-wristed variety. Men like that would have been offensive to Daddy's vanity. Daddy wanted the macho, virile types, the ones who portrayed an idealized image of himself. I couldn't have been more pleased.

Though I didn't take a lover right away. No, it was months before I chose one. In the intervening period I simply watched the constant stream of appealing bodies. Daddy neglected me more and more, and, in a word, I got hornier and hornier. I began to masturbate pretty regularly-something I hadn't done since the pre-puberty days at boarding school. When the tension really started building up, and when Daddy had been closeted with one of his boys for so long that I knew there'd be nothing left for me, I'd skulk off to my room and bring the old finger into play. This, you understand, was well before the vibrator craze, when female masturbation took time and concentration. I can't help thinking that manual diddling is getting to be something of a lost art. In any case, I'd slip off to my room and take care of my own business. Out of boredom as much as anything else, I'd picture Daddy getting it on with his boyfriends. The images were so perverse that they embarrassed me at first. But I gradually accustomed myself to them, as I accustomed myself to everything. Then I really started enjoying them. What surprised me, though, was that I enjoyed picturing the bodies of the handsome young men at least as much as I enjoyed picturing Daddy. Now, I suppose that won't seem surprising to anyone else, but you have to try to understand how completely my erotic life had been shaped by Daddy-it took a real effort for me even to realize there were other possibilities.

But gradually, lolling in my room with time (and vaseline) on my hands, I realized there were other possibilities. In fact, the other possibilities visited our house every day. So I decided that I would no longer be the only one doing without. I'd keep my eyes and ears open for a suitable opportunity.

A suitable opportunity was not long in coming. Daddy had a preference for ravishing his young men in the late afternoon, soon after he had awakened, had his breakfast, and had gone through his first pint or so of vodka. He'd dawdle with his handsome plaything till around dusk, then fall asleep, refreshing himself for the evening encounter, which would generally begin shortly before midnight. In any case, the afternoon partner would usually leave the mansion just before dark. Sometimes a butler would show him to the door, other times he'd simply let himself out. One day he had a particularly handsome lover, whom I resolved to intercept at the front door.

My desire had been building up for a long time, and I was very excited at the mere prospect of my planned seduction. I spent much of the afternoon masturbating, and when I went to meet my prey, I had as much of a rosy glow on as he did.

I held my breath as I watched him descend the marble staircase that led down to the front door. I had no idea who he was-Daddy never liked me to mingle with his studs, whether out of shame or jealousy I really can't say. In any case, I watched him come toward me. The perspective made him look exaggeratedly tall and massive. His jeans were snug and promising. His hair was sandy and thick. His arms swung cockily as he walked. If he was drained from his afternoon with Daddy, he didn't look it. He looked ready to go.

When he was almost at the bottom of the stairs, I suddenly felt shy. I had never known another man, you see. There had only been Daddy. But I was resigned. I wanted to do it. I stood in my dim corner, seeing but unseen. I told myself to be as bold and brazen as the situation demanded.

"Hello," I heard myself say. My voice sounded husky and beckoning. I honestly don't know where that tone came from. I'd never used it before.

The young hunk did a double-take. His eyes turned in the direction of the voice, and finally he saw me in the dimness. He didn't smile, but looked wary. He was one of my father's whores, after all, and I guess it was pretty hard for him to trust any aspect of the situation. "Hello," he said.

I didn't know what to say next. It occurred to me just to say something conversational-ask him what his name was, comment on the weather-something safe and neutral like that. But it didn't seem right somehow. The whole set-up was so weird, so amoral, so fringe-to make small talk seemed too incongruous, too hypocritical. Without making a conscious decision, I opted for the most brazen course of action. "How much did he pay you?" I asked.

The stud was silent for a moment. I was only eighteen, remember, and I looked it. It wasn't the sort of question you expected to hear from a pretty eighteen-year-old cowering in a dim doorway. I could've been a virgin for all he knew. His eyes, adjusting to the dimness, sized me up. His gaze was like fingertips. "Two hundred," he said at last, his voice flat and neutral.

"Give him his money's worth?" I asked. It was a challenge, and we both knew it. His face softened just a notch-it was still a hard face, but now he was starting to trust the game, he wasn't wary anymore.

"Why don't you ask him?" he said, challenging me right back. I was new at this sort of game, but I found it invigorating. If I hadn't been so erotically desperate to begin with, I expect this word-play would have made me that way. And the dimness, the hulking image of him a couple of steps above me.

"I would ask him," I said, "but he's asleep. He wouldn't be able to hear." I wondered if the hunk was bright enough to figure out he wouldn't be able to hear anything else either-especially if it was happening in one of the bedrooms in the far wing of the thirty-seven room house.

"No," said the handsome catamite. "I suppose he wouldn't." And that's all he said. The bastard was leaving it to me to make all the advances! I guess he was used to being pursued. As for me, I was hardly used to pursuing, but when the need is bad enough, the instincts come around. And so does the nerve.

"How would you like to double your money?" I asked.

His face brightened at that. He was a straightforward mercenary, a businessman of the genitals. But he wasn't ruthless about it. He had a sense of fair play. "Only if I give satisfaction," he said. "Tell you what-we'll go double or nothing on the bucks I got from your old man. Fair enough?"

I only nodded. He reached a hand down toward me and I joined him on the stairs.

I found myself strangely short of breath as we took the long slow walk toward the bedroom. Desperate as I was, I still considered backing out. Suddenly it all seemed too much too soon. Not only would this paid buck be my first lover outside the family, but he'd be making love to me under the most unromantic conditions imaginable. At eighteen, I was supposed to demand vows, music-my expectations were supposed to be higher. But Daddy, and Hollywood, had made me prematurely jaded, and I didn't back out. Pure erotic need overcame compunction.

At the door of my bedroom, the prostitute-gigolo gracefully stepped aside and ushered me in. There was no turning back now. He silently closed the door behind us. I stood there and examined his face closely. It was not an unkind face, though somewhat hardened by experience. There was little trust in the eyes. But the visage was unquestionably appealing. As was the torso, which was powerful without being overly hulking. I found myself drifting toward him, moving into an embrace I was not quite sure I was ready for.

But I must have been ready, because electric shocks started going through me at the first touch of our bodies. My nipples brushed lightly against his chest and instantly became taut, even though we were both still fully dressed. For a moment we just stood there, the contact made more luscious by its tenuousness. But then his arms came around me and locked me in a more secure embrace. Now I felt the entire length of his body pressing against mine. My breasts were flattened against his chest, my abdomen felt the hard plateau of his strong stomach. And my loins felt the first promising pressure of his manhood. Through his pants and through my skirt, I could still feel the very shape of his member. Whatever he had done with Daddy earlier that afternoon, his vigor seemed wholly replenished. We kissed. Though he might have been a paid companion, there was nothing matter-of-fact in his kissing. His mouth worked patiently and thoroughly, his lips gradually parting my own, his tongue coming into play at just the right moment, flicking at my teeth, probing the insides of my cheeks. I no longer had any doubt of my readiness-I could feel the warm insinuating evidence of it in my loins.

Still locked in an embrace, we sidled toward the bed. The stud lowered me gently down, his arms strong enough to hold me firm at each phase of my descent. When he'd laid me down, he joined me. For a while we rolled over the mattress like children, one of us on top, then the other. I felt his comforting weight on top of me, then we rolled and I placed my lighter but no less urgent weight on him. Always, in whatever position we ended up, I felt the shifting bulge in his pants. It found my loins surely no matter how we tumbled.

His hands came up and worked my breasts. I bathed in the pleasure and, simultaneously, became increasingly aware of my anger toward Daddy for neglecting me of late, for keeping me half-starved, for depriving me of these delights. I realized then that there was an element of pure and simple revenge in my bedding of this versatile young man. Well, so be it. Revenge or lust, it felt the same. I gave myself up to him with utter abandon. I groaned under the pressure of his hands, and when he began to dry hump me, I ground my hips in return for all I was worth.

But, as lovely as all this dallying was, we both felt a growing impulse to end it, to get out of our clothes and down to the central business. When we finally did undress, we did it quickly, suddenly impatient. I unzipped my skirt and yanked it down over my hips in a frenzy. The panties were gone in a single whisk. I was in such a hurry to be free of my blouse that I tore off a button removing it. The bra was unsnapped in a second.

Before undressing himself, the stud took a moment to contemplate me. I daresay he was pleased. My nipples seemed to have become permanently erect, and as for my loins, well, I had no doubt they were so suffused as to offer externally visible evidence of my excitement. He should have been flattered. I suppose he was, because he very nearly smiled.

Then he removed his own clothes while I greedily observed. He had a beautiful chest, broad and well defined, with just a few golden tufts of hair along the breastbone. His belly was flat and well-muscled, smooth except for another curly patch around his navel. When he stepped out of his pants, I got the welcome confirmation of what I'd already surmised. He was splendidly hung. Even in my limited experience, I could tell that. My father, you see, had a sexuality of almost mythic proportions. I'd overheard more than one of his former lovers praise his endowment. But the monument I beheld now was at least the equal of Daddy's. If not superior in size, it was at least grander in a certain indefinable sort of energy. It seemed to have a kind of aura, almost a halo. Or perhaps it was only its nest of honey-colored pubes that gave it that heavenly glow. In any case, I was impressed.

Naked now, it was quite difficult to restrain ourselves from plunging headlong toward the ultimate consummation. But the stud wasn't a pro for nothing. He had terrific discipline and an urge to please that surpassed the merely enterprising. Accordingly, I'd barely clutched his torso to mine when he went slinking down along my belly, kissing me at every step along the way, until his face was buried in the exact place I wanted it. This, I assure you, was an act of generosity not often practiced by Daddy. Daddy was a superlative lover, but let his member do a disproportionate amount of the labor. My stud seemed to have a somewhat broader repertoire of tricks to please both men and women. I lay back and sighed and swooned while his expert tongue completed its tour of duty. As far as I was concerned, if some unfortunate circumstance had curtailed our mating right there, he would already have earned his two hundred dollars-with a generous tip into the bargain.

Fortunately, however, our lovemaking was not curtailed, but continued at some length. In time, my lover ascended face to face, bringing with him a redolence of myself that only added to my involvement. I yearned to be entered now, to have the fullness of which I'd been deprived of late. My partner obliged me, slowly, expertly, letting me savor each small addition of himself into me. This tantalizing treatment continued far past the time when I would have sworn I had all of him. But he wasn't wholly swallowed until I felt a delicious dull ache at the mouth of my womb, and a sympathetic tightness that caught all the way up in my throat.

The rest was almost too sweet to tell. The feel of his manly weight on top of me; the security of his strong arms enfolding me; the clutching fullness of his probing member inside me; the gradually heightening rhythm of his thrusts, the growing urgency with which he moved in me....After a beautifully extended build-up, the shared release came on in a frenzied abandon, a final consummation amid tangled sheets and singing bedsprings, a tempestuous conclusion in which I was unaware of my own gratefully relieved sighs and screams....

Afterwards, we lolled and chatted. Only then did I learn the name of my paramour. He was Jim Lapper, and, sure enough, he was another movie-biz hopeful. Removed from the pressure of performance and the enforced cynicism of his "profession," he proved to be a very nice man. He smiled a lot. I hoped I would see him again, but I really didn't know how to ask, what to say. All this was so new to me-I just didn't know the moves.

But I was flattered and encouraged by the fact that, when Jim had dressed and was ready to leave, he refused to take my money. He'd enjoyed it too much to regard it as work, he said. Then, giving me a last smile, suddenly boyish, he left.

Daddy was still in the midst of his satiated nap, and I soon fell into one myself.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The encounter with Jim Lapper, wonderful as it was, really complicated my life. When I'd been only Daddy's little concubine, I'd known the simple comforts of monogamy, however weird the form of my monogamy had been. But now that I'd tasted the sweets of multiplicity, I didn't really know what to do. I found myself longing for an independence far greater than I knew Daddy would ever grant me willingly.

But I'm not trying to say that one great lay was sufficient to change my whole outlook on things. No, my newfound independence had to do with many other things. The main one was simply age. I was eighteen now, and I was chafing against the restrictions Daddy had always put on me. Ever since that fateful afternoon when I'd begun my period and ended my virginity, I'd been something of a social zombie. Daddy had yanked me out of school, separated me from my friends, and made the entire outline of my life so bizarre that it was all but impossible for me to have any relationships with my peers. As a young teenager, I'd gone along with this, because I didn't know any better. I'd never had any power over myself, never made my own choices-so I just let things be decided for me.

But now' I was at the age when I had to start deciding things for myself. My afternoon delight with Jim Lapper had been merely a symbolic token of my new resolve.

It didn't take long for Daddy to become aware of the subtle but profound changes that were going on inside me. For all his bravado, he was a very insecure man, hyper attuned to any circumstances that threatened his hold over-over anything. He sensed my distraction, my distance. He realized that I was growing discontent, that the confines of the mansion were starting to make me feel trapped. But, though he realized it, he did not confront it. He must have understood the inevitability of my slipping away from him, and he put off the formal acknowledgement for as long as he could.

So, on the surface at least, things continued much as they had been, for several months after my affair with Jim. But things weren't exactly the same. Jim had given me a taste for non-incest, and I frequently had afternoon lovers. I no longer offered to pay them. I had come to realize they were grateful for the company of a woman, for a situation in which they could be pleasured as well as pleasure. In a sense, I suppose I became part of the payment for what they did for Daddy! The Hollywood grapevine is extensive and has no limits as to taste-and I don't doubt that the entire stud network knew that a visit to the Stanford mansion might lead to a tumble with Drew Stanford's lovely young daughter. I don't doubt that the rumors made me out to be a slut, a nymphomaniac, a mad and sex-crazed recluse. But I didn't let the rumors bother me. You get used to them if you've grown up in Tinseltown. What mattered was that the grapevine kept a constant stream of handsome young men ringing our doorbell. I could pick and choose among them.

For my own peace of mind, I chose to assume that Daddy was completely in the dark about these goings-on. I mean "in the dark" literally. After he'd had his afternoon's amusement, he'd close the shutters of his room, shut the door, and drift off into what I thought was profound sleep. But apparently it wasn't so. Or maybe Daddy had the household staff spying on me. In any case, at some point he found out. I learned that one night at dinner, in what proved to be one of the most painful scenes of my life.

We were sitting there, at opposite ends of the table, drinking champagne and eating lobster. Daddy, as always, was formally dressed for dinner. This was a habit he kept all his life, even now when his career was in decline, when his social life had deteriorated, when there was no one to impress. It was an outward token of his stubborn dignity. He ate his lobster, drank his wine, and looked terribly sad. The sadness, for Daddy, was not unusual of late. He had no choice left but to acknowledge his not-too-distant fate of has-been. His scattered sex life, designed to relieve the pangs of age, only exacerbated them. Embracing young men was a pathetic pleasure. And he realized that I too was drifting. He regretted his neglect of me. And, though I was too involved in my own resentment to realize this at the time, at least part of the reason he held back from me was that he felt he was growing repulsive, unworthy of me. Though he was hardly repulsive. He was still handsome, though his hair was almost wholly white by now. He was still sexy, though his sexiness was no longer predicated on sheer animal drive. In many other towns, in many other businesses, perhaps he could have aged quite gracefully.

In any case, his sadness had become habitual. But on this particular night, it seemed particularly pronounced. He moped, he sulked, he barely seemed to taste his food or to be aware of my presence. So heavy was his gloom that I finally broke down and asked him what was wrong.

He lost no time in getting to the heart of the matter. "You're not a virgin anymore, are you, Lara?"

Though he put the remark in the form of a question, there was no uncertainty in it. He knew. What was strange, though, was that he still considered me a virgin as long as I slept only with him. As if incest didn't count. As if maidenheads were somehow impervious to the thrusts of fathers. Well, maybe that's what he found so exciting about having sex with me-having a virgin every time. It may have been an appealing notion, but it was also a rather crazy one-one more indication that Daddy was really slipping.

In any case, I really didn't know how to respond to Daddy's pronouncement. I was very embarrassed. I blushed. Now, it may seem absurd that, under the circumstances, I should have felt any shame in confessing a transgression to Daddy. After all he'd done, both to me and generally, why should I possibly feel shame? Logically, there was no reason at all-but emotionally, I still felt it. I'd been a bad girl, and my father was still my father. I'd hurt him by being bad, and even though I resented him, even though I harbored an immense anger toward him that came closer and closer to consciousness as I matured-still, it hurt me that I had hurt him. But there was no denying the charge.

I looked down at my plate, and I said, "No, Daddy, I'm, not a virgin anymore." Picking up on his absurd terminology seemed a way of partially compensating for my offense.

What I expected, and I suppose, feared, was that Daddy would react with rage, that he would yell, scream, call me dreadful names-all of which would lead to a sadistic scene, a painful confrontation in which Daddy would spank me, or worse. But he only sat there, fork in hand, an absent expression on his face. "I should have known," he said at last. Then he attempted a smile. But the smile was so strained and unnatural that it was sadder than the most abject frowning. "My little girl is slipping away."

His elegiac tone was so unexpected that it instantly brought tears to my eyes. Though I must admit I was skeptical of my father's sincerity-he was an actor, remember, and he wasn't above almost any trick to hold on to control, to maintain his dominance. But Daddy wasn't that good an actor, and his show of bereavement was terrifically convincing. So I felt myself melting. Resentment fell away in the face of an all-consuming, if irrational, love. I tried to speak, but couldn't.

"Tell me about it," Daddy said, after a pause.

"Tell you about what?" I asked. My emotions were in such a battered state that I found it difficult to maintain the continuity of my thoughts.

"About the other men you've been with," he said.

The request stunned me. I still didn't know exactly what Daddy was asking for, but the question seemed to go beyond the bounds of all discretion. My head swam. I wanted to stall for time. "I don't know what you mean, Daddy," I said weakly.

"Yes you do, Lara," he said. "You know very well what I mean." He paused for a moment and I scrutinized his face. The cruelty was beginning to rise in it. It was not a raging cruelty, but a subtler, more passive kind. "Tell me what you did, how it felt." The room seemed to move out of focus as I heard the words. Daddy was asking me to report in detail my transgressions, my illicit passions! I couldn't believe it. Not only would he be subjecting me to the humiliation of reporting all, but he'd be putting himself through the pain of hearing it. He seemed to take a truly perverse delight in heightening his agony. And he drew me right into that sick cycle of masochism and sadism. I sat back in my chair and simply looked at him, hoping perhaps that he'd sense the severity of my distress and back off in his demands. But there was no chance of that. His face was set. His mind was made up. I could have resisted, I suppose, but my will was simply overmastered by his.

So I launched into the story. At first my voice was hesitant and soft, and he had to tell me often to speak up. But then I gathered momentum. I told him about my premier encounter with Jim Lapper. Then I told him about the other young lads I'd propositioned. I told him about the brazenness of my approaches, about the heady combination of shame and fulfillment I'd always felt. I told him about the lovers I'd had more than once, and the ones I'd discarded after a single tryout. I told him about the ebbing and flowing of my lusts, about the times my need was so exigent that the lovemaking began right on the stairway! I spared him no detail, and I was surprised to find that, as I proceeded, I began to relish the story! I was shocked at myself, but there was no denying it-once I was over the initial compunction, I took pleasure in this recounting of my transgressions! Even as I told the story, piling detail upon erotic detail, I tried to analyze the origins of the perverse pleasure I was taking. On the one hand, I was wounding Daddy and I knew it-every time I told him of my craving for a young man's torso, he was made to realize afresh that he was not the man he'd once been. Though it pained me to hurt, it also delighted me, salved my own feelings of having been irreparably damaged by him. Aside from this cruel pleasure, there was the cathartic joy of confessing. For too long, I'd kept my philandering a secret, and the secret, while enticing, had become a burden. I'd always feared discovery. But now the discovery had been made and the secret could be spilled. The outpouring of it was very closely analogous to orgasm itself! But there was still another element in the forbidden glee I felt in telling the tale-I knew I would be punished for it. This, I suppose, was the most queasily weird part of all. I was not confessing to a benevolent priest who would absolve me, chide me lightly perhaps, and then send me on my way. No, I was confessing to Daddy-whose cruelty and vindictiveness I knew only too well. He'd retaliate, of that I could be sure. And I was shocked to realize that I'd welcome the retaliation! I was courting punishment. This embarrassed me to myself. I'd encountered Daddy's sadism before, of course, but I'd always seen myself as the innocent victim of it, rather than as a participant. I always told myself that I wasn't a masochist-I just happened to have a sadist for a lover. I spared myself the realization of my own twisted needs. But now I could no longer spare myself-I was asking to be spanked, flogged, verbally abused-whatever Daddy thought fit. Only castigation would put the sins to rest. Simple confession was not enough-it had to be confession followed by sentencing.

And so I continued with the story. I told Daddy of the ways in which I'd used my mouth, of the ways I'd let my orifices be probed. He listened with a kind of agonized relish. I had no doubt that he was erect, that this monologue was affecting his body as well as his soul. Strangely, it affected my body as well. Recounting my past passions made me passionate; telling of my excesses made me eager for excess.

Finally I reached the end of my account. I told Daddy of the lover I'd taken that very afternoon, whose semen was still inside me even as we spoke. That fact seemed to lend an awful immediacy to everything that had gone before. Then I fell silent. Daddy too was silent. Then he called-bellowed-for more champagne. A servant obsequiously appeared from the kitchen, poured the wine, and disappeared again. Daddy sipped his liquor slowly.

The delay was excruciating. If the axe was going to fall, I wanted it to fall-not be poised above my head for an endless moment. I don't know if Daddy was planning the appropriate punishment or simply enjoying my discomfiture. Perhaps he regarded his long silence as part of the punishment. Intended or otherwise, it had that effect.

"Most ungrateful," he said at last. His voice was low in volume, but not at all soft. It was dangerously low-pitched, the calm before the storm. "I should have expected it, though," he added, his voice taking on a world-weary, cavernous sadness. "Still, I can't simply accept it. There are rules, you know."

It was absurd, of course, for Daddy to speak of rules, but there you have it. He presumed to play the arbiter, and I hadn't the will to protest. I hadn't the desire to protest. I seemed to need to receive the consequences as much as Daddy needed to mete them out. The situation was full of painful ironies. Why, for instance, should I find the prospect of being punished for erotic excess, erotic? But I did. There's no denying it. I sat there under Daddy's gaze, feeling a sickly blend of dread and anticipation.

"Lara," he resumed, after draining yet another glass of champagne, "on my dresser you'll find a hairbrush, a mahogany-handled brush with black natural bristles. Go upstairs and fetch it for me."

My throat closed and I swallowed hard. I couldn't speak. So, I was in for a spanking after all. Like an automaton, barely aware of my own movements, I rose from my chair. My legs were unsteady beneath and I was intensely aware of the wetness between my legs-the wetness that should not have been there.

I climbed the stairs from the dining room toward Daddy's wing of the house. I knew well the hairbrush he'd sent me to fetch-I'd been hit with it before, though not in years. I still remembered, though, the feel of its hard bristles. They slapped, bruised, and scratched all at once. They reddened the buttocks almost from the first contact, and then proceeded to brighten the hue to a bumpy scarlet....I reached the door of Daddy's room. I saw the brush on his dresser. The dresser was backed by a mirror, and I caught a glimpse of myself in it. I looked depraved. My face was flushed, my cheeks were rosy-as if I were looking forward to some lyrical pleasure rather than some humiliating pain. I picked up the brush. The handle was thick and masculine, and the thing was heavy in my hand. I started back out the door with it, and then I stopped. A remarkable idea had occurred to me. The idea was so warped that I hesitated before giving in to it. But I did give in. I decided to give myself a feel of the brush before turning the pleasure of my castigation over to Daddy! Why not? I should take some responsibility for my own disciplining. Secretly, watching the door lest I be discovered in this perverse act, I lifted my skirt. Then, just for a moment, I dropped my panties. Leaning forward, I reached in back of myself and raked the bristles hard across the slope of my own buttocks! The sudden scratch and burn brought tears to my eyes. But tears were not the only thing to be set flowing by the first feel of the brush....I knew then just how much I would enjoy this supposed punishment.

I pulled my panties back up, let my skirt fall back into place, and headed back down the stairs. The place I'd scratched myself left a hot patch that I felt and savored as I walked.

By the time I returned downstairs, Daddy had moved from the dining room to the living room. I found him there, sitting on the luxurious sofa with a huge snifter of brandy in his hands. His face was flushed with drink and cruel anticipation. But he was suffering, a thought which consoled me. He looked at me sternly and then, balancing the brandy snifter on his very obviously bulging lap, he silently reached out a hand for the brush. Silently, timidly, I leaned forward and handed it to him. As I did so, it occurred to me that this whole thing had become a convoluted and conspiratorial game. Oh, the love was real enough, as was the pain, the jealousy, the tight clinging. But each of us knew exactly what was going on-far more than we dared acknowledge.

Still silent, Daddy motioned me toward him. With an elegant and remarkably restrained gesture, he lowered his brandy over the arm of the settee onto the carpet. Then he reached out a hand and grabbed my wrist-not roughly, but with a firmness so masterful that resistance was unthinkable. He pulled steadily on my arm and I half-lay, half-fell across his lap. My face was against the arm of the sofa, and my thighs were pressed downward against Daddy's. As if I needed any further evidence of the role of the erotic notions of discipline, I could instantly feel that he was totally erect. It was difficult for me to prevent myself from squirming against him. I had to remind myself that I was there to be chastised, not indulged.

For a long moment, Daddy was still. I lay there waiting for him to lift my skirt and then to drop my panties. He knew I was waiting and so he delayed. Then finally he made his move. Expertly, he grabbed the hem of my skirt and started pulling the fine cloth upward along my thighs. When he'd lifted it as high as he could without encountering the resistance of my weight pressing down, I quickly raised my hips, enabling him to get the skirt up around my waist. The entire movement was smooth and graceful, without a hitch. I took satisfaction from the recognition of how nicely Daddy and I played our game. My skirt raised, there was only one thin layer of cloth separating my flesh from Daddy's attack-and from his penetrating gaze. He paused another moment, and then he slipped his hand under the waistband of my panties. His fingers were hot on my buttocks as he slid the thin cloth down over my legs. He did not take the panties off-no, he simply left them dangling from my ankles, intentionally awkward, inelegant. He wanted to stress the fact that I was not nude, but undressed. Any woman who has ever indulged in playful perverse sex will understand the distinction, I'm sure.

My bum was exposed now, and my skin could almost feel the bristles before the blows had started to fall. But again Daddy paused. He very deliberately picked up the brush. My face buried in the arm of the sofa, I could not see what he was doing, but it seemed he was examining it, taking stock of his weapon the way a fencer lovingly examines his sword. Then, without warning, the first blow landed.

It was so sudden that I didn't have time to cry out. The brush landed on my right buttock, the bristles stinging and instantly raising tiny rash-like welts. Before I had even begun to accustom myself to the sensation, the brush descended again, on my left buttock this time, lending a fearful symmetry to my pain. Once begun, the blows came hard and fast, the bristles sometimes bouncing, sometimes raking. Occasionally I felt the hilt of the brush slam against my yielding flesh. The blows hurt, and yet there is no such thing as pain except that which is perceived as pain-and the sensation I was experiencing was far more complex than that. It was a sweet agony, a fulfilling hurt. And the blows gave me a perfect excuse to rock my hips against Daddy's lap, to press against him with abandon. The other side of me, you see, was far from immune from the stimulation of my bum. I tingled all over. What hurt in one place felt awfully good in another. And aside from the complex feelings, there was a definite relief in this spanking I'd sinned by taking on Daddy's lovers, and the sins were heavy on me. But this punishment lightened the burden-and left me free to do it all over again!

I was crying now, but the tears were more of transport than anything else. I was rocking my hips, thrashing like a beached fish, feeling Daddy's member poking me from below even as the brush prodded me from above. In the midst of it all, I could not help thinking how ripe I would be to be entered by Daddy when the spanking was over. I was aching for the consummation.

I didn't realize at the time that the spanking would prove to be the consummation in itself. As I was battered, I humped harder and harder. And the more I moved, the more I stimulated that part that would trigger the release. I could feel myself rising higher and higher, closer and closer-and yet I never imagined I'd be so wound up, so perversely excited, that I'd actually reach orgasm by being spanked while my loins received only the indirect stimulation of being bounced and pressed against Daddy's clothed lap! It seemed too extreme, too raw, too embarrassing a confirmation of the masochistic delight I was taking in being disciplined....

But there's no quibbling with physiology. The body doesn't lie. If the body responds to something, it proves you're loving it-and if it's something that makes you uneasy, well, you've just got to come to terms with it. That was the night I came to terms with my masochistic side. There was no other explanation. Yes, while I lay, being spanked, absorbing Daddy's anger-my womb and clitoris untouched except at several removes from usual contact-I reached orgasm, one of the most wrenching, total, fulfilling orgasms I had ever had....

Then the spanking was finally over. I wondered what would happen next. I wondered if Daddy would now want to have sex with me. I wondered if I should let him know about my orgasm.

But, rolling off his lap onto the floor, my bruised bottom raw against the carpet, I looked back up at him and was only half-surprised to see that he had also reached a climax! The evidence of it was clearly spreading across the front of his trousers. I smiled inwardly. Daddy and I were actually quite alike....

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

That night was, in many ways, both the high point and the low point of Daddy's and my erotic life. On the one hand, it was the instance in which our sexual neuroses were most thoroughly aligned, when our respective aberrations were most perfectly attuned. On the other hand, after sinking-no value judgment implied-to such depths of out-and-out incestuous sadomasochism, where was there left to go? That encounter, being the most perfect crystallization of Daddy's and my relationship, was also something of an ending. After that night, Daddy would never hold such utter sway over me again. The spanking with the hairbrush was the swan song of his dominance.

THE END of Daddy's dominion, however, had to do with more than the simple sexual play. As always, questions of age were involved. I was at the age where self-determination becomes a real possibility, a necessity even. For me, then, the spanking scene was a sort of rite of passage. Daddy quite literally whipped the last shreds of my girlhood out of me. I was now ready to take on the responsibilities and prerogatives of my own womanhood.

Accordingly, a few days after the affair of the hairbrush, I calmly informed Daddy that I wanted to go to college. I had never graduated from high school, you understand, but my tutors had prepared me so well that I was quite confident about passing entrance exams and so forth. Further, in my adolescent years of enforced loneliness, I'd been a voracious reader, and was far more sophisticated in most subjects than my peers. College was the logical next move."

I really had no idea what to expect by way of a reply from Daddy. I couldn't imagine that he would let me slip away that easily. But I was surprised at the mildness of his attempts to dissuade me. Wasn't I happy where I was? he asked. Wouldn't I be content simply to be provided with more advanced tutors?

Well, I stuck to my guns and insisted on college. I worked up my nerve to tell Daddy that it wasn't simply a book education I wanted, but some sort of shot at normalcy. If he hadn't already screwed me up beyond repair, I wanted a chance to fry functioning in real life.

Daddy put up less of a fight than I'd feared. Apparently he was also resigned to a necessary change in our relations. So he said yes to college. The next question was where I'd go. Now, even then, I knew that, for my own good, I should get as far away from Daddy as I possibly could-I should go to the Sorbonne, or Wittenberg, or the University of Antarctica. But sad to say, I myself didn't really have the nerve to break the string that completely. In later years I would have, but at nineteen, still bearing Daddy's stamp on every part of me, I just couldn't bring myself to make a clean break. So I suggested going to UCLA.

Daddy was very relieved at my choice. He'd feared, no doubt, that I'd opt for a school back east, somewhere far away. He gladly consented to having me in Los Angeles, a short limo ride away. There was still one very important issue, however-would I live at home, or on campus?

I was very firm about living on campus. I still remembered the worthwhile (if somewhat crazy) relationships I'd had with the girls at boarding school, and I wanted to see if, after all that had happened, I could recapture that comforting sense of camaraderie. At first, Daddy was equally firm about having me stay at home. Why did I want to live in a crummy, cramped dorm, he asked, when I could have so much convenience and luxury right here? Well, that was a point, but the fact was that convenience and luxury had made a zombie out of me. I wanted a shot at real life. Besides, I could just picture what it would be like if I lived at home while attending college: It would be finals week. I'd be sitting in my room trying to get some studying done, and Daddy would barge in, three-quarters stewed, his member in hand, demanding that I perform an unnatural act. How would I ever get anything done? I mean, it's one thing to perform unnatural acts with a fellow student-a fellow student, at least, is under the same pressures, he knows what you're up against.

Anyway, Daddy finally gave in to my insistence, which was a first in itself. So, as soon as the arrangements could be made, I moved out of the mansion into a UCLA dorm. I was a freshman among other freshmen-and I couldn't help but wonder if my history-so astoundingly different from the histories of my classmates-would isolate me. I resolved to be as regular as possible, to try and hide my past. I was determined to make good.

The classes themselves were no problem. My tutors had prepared me well, and I breezed through the introductory courses. That much I'd expected. But the crux of my test was social.

To give you some idea of what I was up against, let me tell you a little about my roommate. Her name was Sissy McPherson, and she was just about typical of the college freshmen of the time. She was nineteen, had freckles and long straight hair, and wore long skirts, knee socks, and penny loafers. She didn't curse, drank moderately on special occasions, and had very traditional beliefs about marriage and so forth. She was probably a virgin, though now and then I got the feeling that maybe she'd done the deed with her high school sweetheart back in Fresno. More likely, it was one of those everything-but affairs. But the point is, she'd never talk about it. She was bashful and discreet-which were two qualities I'd never before encountered. You just didn't come across them in Hollywood. Sissy believed in having dates, and she was very particular about how a date should be arranged. For example, if a boy asked her out on a Thursday, for that weekend, she'd turn him down, even if it was someone she was really dying to get to know. But she just decided that Wednesday was the cut-off day for accepting dates. A boy wouldn't respect you if you accepted dates on short notice. He'd take you for granted. He'd think you weren't popular. Similarly, he wouldn't respect you if you gave in too easily, even on little things like French kisses and over-the-sweater breast feels. You had to deprive yourself of almost all the things you wanted to feel, in order to preserve your reputation.

Now, I'm not knocking Sissy's values. On the contrary, I think they're very nice and sort of quaint-they make for a nice orderly universe. But the problem was, I really didn't know if I could conform to them. First of all, I knew nothing about playing the coquette, drawing the line. My sex life, consisting of Daddy and his male prostitutes, had been a strict case of all or nothing. And Hollywood had made me decidedly indiscreet. Further, I was simply used to having sex, and it isn't easy to retreat from that, even if you want to.

But I was determined to try. As a token gesture, I went out and bought a whole new wardrobe-kilts, knee socks, blouses with Peter Pan collars, little cardigan sweaters for the cool nights-the most innocent, chaste-looking stuff I could find. Next, I went to work on my voice-I tried to keep it soft and lady-like, innocent and clean-mouthed. I sat primly in class, my legs pressed snugly together or crossed cautiously at the ankles.

I also asked Sissy to help me find dates. You see, Sissy was the real article that I was trying to portray, so she dated the kind of guys I wanted to get to know-big, husky, crew-cut types, the kind who might talk big in the locker room about what they'd "gotten"-but who in reality were bashful and unpushy, and who would be grateful for even a kiss goodnight.

Well, it was only a matter of a couple of weeks before Sissy fixed me up with my first Joe College. His name was, in fact, Joe, but his last name was not College, but rather, Academy. Joe Academy was on the football team. He was about six foot five, and very good looking if you liked the type. His neck was thicker than his skull, and had received far more exercise. He was quietly conceited. He never bragged about his gridiron exploits-you were simply supposed to be amazed about them. I guess he figured girls didn't understand football anyway, so it wasn't worth the trouble explaining.

Now, in retrospect it seems absurd, but at the time I was very excited about my date with Joe Academy. It was to be my first brush with regular American life! Accordingly, I spent a long time selecting my clothes, and an even longer time getting into them. Sissy stood by my side the whole time, as attentive as if she were helping me preen for my wedding bed. By the time I'd applied just a slight hint of very pale lipstick, and sprayed my hair into a cute and indestructible flip, I felt just like something out of Seventeen magazine.

Joe came to pick me up in a 1953 Chevy. He honked the horn outside the dorm, and I went running down the stairs like any other dizzy girl. Joe looked me over as I slid into the front seat beside him, and seemed to approve of my appearance. He showed his approval by letting out a long low whistle. But that's the kind of guy Joe Academy was.

Well, there isn't much about that evening that's really worth retelling. We went out for a burger. Then we saw a double feature. By that time, Joe's massive frame required more nourishment, and we went out for another burger. During this whole time, what little conversation there had been, was on the most banal level imaginable. It was of the Howdya-like-your-classes, whaddya-do-for-laughs variety. In a word, Joe Academy was dumb. There was a kind of blockish charm about him, but it was miles beneath the kind of suavity I was used to expecting. Anyway, at the end of the evening, when Joe drove me back to the dorm, there was the unavoidable nervous moment. Would we kiss? Would we more than kiss? Or would we just sit there?

Now, I really wanted to kiss, not because I was all that hot on Joe Academy, but because I was curious about what it was like to kiss with your mouth closed, to do it with somebody that you had no intention of having sex with. But of course I couldn't make the first move-I had learned from Sissy that that was an absolute no-no. So I just sat there for what seemed an eternity, and then, finally, Joe swiveled his small square head on his huge round neck, and pointed his lips in my direction. His eyes were already closed. I turned toward him and kissed about. Another thing I didn't know about this sort of kiss, was how long it was supposed to last. I mean, if you breathed through your nose, it could go on indefinitely. But then your breath might tickle the other person's upper lip. Also, did the fact that a girl wasn't allowed to start a kiss, also imply that she had to be the one to end it? I mean, if boys were supposed to be the ones who wanted to do everything, and if girls were supposed to be the ones who didn't want to do anything, then it followed that a kiss could go on forever unless the girl backed away.

Well, finally I broke off the kiss, mostly because I was getting bored. Joe Academy just sat there perfectly still and let his lips lie there against mine. For all the passion, I might as well have kissed a lukewarm pork chop. But Joe himself seemed pleased. Now he could tell the guys he'd kissed me. He made a motion to do it again, and I didn't resist. But I should have known he'd try to take it a little farther this time. This time his tongue poked out from between his lips. He was trying to French me, and I was duty bound to try to resist. For a time I kept my lips tightly locked, like a child refusing even to taste the broccoli. His tongue slithered around like a worm looking for its hole, but I just simply wouldn't let him in. Finally I relented somewhat and let the tongue in past my lips. But my teeth were still closed, and my own tongue was safe inside. If he wanted to lick my teeth, O.K., but I wasn't about to allow our saliva to mingle. That was for the second date, as I gathered from my systematic roommate.

So Joe contented himself with sucking on my teeth. But he soon began attacking on another front. His hands, which had been rather uselessly clamped around my back, started moving toward my sides, and I instantly knew he was zeroing in on my tits. He was sneaking up on them, as if, if he did it real gradually, I might forget that they were off-limits. But if I forgot, he wouldn't respect me, so I remembered. I let his sly fingers have their way until they crossed the thin line that separates the flank from the beginnings of the breast. At that point, I clamped my elbows to my sides, capturing his hands. He didn't retreat exactly, but kept his hands still and pretended he was concentrating on the kiss-which in fact we'd both stopped paying attention to minutes ago. After a pause, his fingers again tried to crawl to daylight. I let him go a millimeter farther now, just far enough to get a hint of the fullness that miraculously comes out of the sparseness of a woman's ribs. But then I clamped him again. He was nowhere near my nipples, you understand, and I was determined that he wouldn't get near them. I wasn't about, to get my reputation ruined in my very first semester. He made one more try, I let him gain another tiny parcel of flesh, and then, by unspoken mutual consent, we called a truce. We had both gotten something out of the deal-Joe had gotten a kiss and part of a feel enough to tell his friends about, and enough, but not too much-to assure him that he was dealing with neither a prude nor a slut. As for me, I had the satisfaction of knowing that a real live jock was attracted to me, had bought me two hamburgers and a movie, and would probably ask me out again. And, just as he could respect me, I could also respect him, because he'd done what a man had to do-he'd made the advances, pushed for a bit more than he figured he would get, and more or less knew when to give up.

Well, at this point it seems ridiculous that I ever should have been enthusiastic about a date with a lug like Joe Academy, but you have to understand my position. At the age of nineteen, after having been through a real sicko incestuous relationship as well as perhaps a dozen other sordid encounters, I was just beginning to experience the girlish pleasures and gratifications I'd missed the first time around. They brought out the child in me, and I relished them.

But playing the part of the pretty young virgin also took its toll on me. I was living a lie, trying to deny almost all the forces that had shaped me. I was constantly afraid of slipping up, of reverting to past habits. I was afraid of being discovered. And, to tell the truth, I missed certain aspects of my previous life. I missed Daddy. For all his cruelty, for all his craziness, there was between us an intensity and a free-wheeling passion that nothing in my present life could even approximate. I was faking it every step of the way, acting less ambivalently happy than I really was.

Inevitably, I paid the price for this constant pressure. Things started going wrong with my body. I began having trouble sleeping. I had frequent headaches. My menstrual periods became erratic, and then stopped altogether. I was denying too much, and my body was trying to tell me that something had to be done. But I fought off recognizing my body's evidence. For as long as it was possible, I tried to ignore the physical maladies, and when I could no longer ignore them, I tried to ascribe them to other causes. The insomnia, I tried to convince myself, was owing to the pressure of exams and term papers. The headaches, I wanted to believe, were brought about by too much reading, too much intense concentration. The menstrual problems, I hypothesized, had to do with the sudden cessation of my sexual activity. My glands were in an uproar, and I tried to explain it away by external, rather than internal, means.

But when, two-thirds of the way through my first semester, I had a severe attack of colitis, I could no longer fend off acknowledging what I already knew: there were simply too many conflicts going on within me. There was too much damage to undo without professional help. Simply ignoring the past wasn't good enough. The bloody stool I deposited in the dorm toilet one November morning assured me of that.

I decided I'd better see a shrink. I had a lot of resistance to the idea, you understand. Therapy had not yet become chic-it still had a certain stigma attached to it. There was a certain shame in needing a shrink in the first place. Psychologists had no place in the Sissy McPherson scheme of how the world should work. Therapy, then, would be yet one more secret that I'd have to keep from my roommate and peers.

Still, I had to do it, and on that November morning, almost doubled over from the pain in my bowels, I struggled across campus to the counseling office and broke down, crying hysterically. My treatments began later the same day.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

As I learned much later, my shrink's first impression of me was that I was a paranoid schizophrenic with pronounced erotic delusions. In a word, he could not immediately believe that what I claimed to have gone through had actually happened. He thought my defloration was imagined. He thought my incestuous relationship with Daddy was somehow symbolic. He thought I'd made up the stories of the spankings, the seductions, the afternoon affairs with professional studs. Only gradually did it get through to him that I was speaking in perfectly literal terms. I don't know which struck him as weirder-that anyone could imagine those things, or that anyone had actually gone through them.

In any case, I'm not trying to make it seem that I spilled all my deepest secrets on day one of psychotherapy. Hardly. Growing up with Daddy had made it almost impossible for me to trust anyone, and I was not about to spill my guts to some therapist I'd never even met before. I started off very cautiously. All I talked about on that first day was my difficulty in adjusting to college life, and the distressing physical symptoms that that difficulty was beginning to cause. So far, my story was by no means out of the ordinary. Many college freshmen suffer from chronic headaches and stomach trouble. Many young women, nervous to begin with and haunted by the spectre of sex, develop menstrual difficulties in later adolescence. The therapist was quite, if blandly, reassuring on those points. If anything, he seemed somewhat bored by my problems. I was just one more slightly hysterical young woman. And hysterical young women come a dime a dozen.

In time, however, I warmed to my therapist, and the nature of my confessions became more intimate. My therapist was the first man who had really treated me kindly, whose interest in me did not seem to be tainted with some ulterior motive. His name was Stanley J. Epstein, he was in his early thirties, and he wanted to save the world. Maybe I'm jumping the gun by saying this now, but to some readers at least it will already seem an inevitable turn of events: I fell in love with him. Stanley, you see, was a wonderful halfway house between the horns of my dilemma. For example, my father was approaching sixty; the boys at school were around twenty. Having become so accustomed to the company of an older man, it was almost impossible for me to make the four-decade down-step to undergraduates. Stanley, at 33, was a perfect compromise. Similarly, having been accustomed to my father's extreme poise and a worldliness so vast that it amounted to utter jadedness, I couldn't really get excited by the wide-eyed innocence and often silliness of the guys Sissy lined me up with. Again, Stanley was a perfect middle ground-he was far more sophisticated and serious-minded than the UCLA jocks and clowns, but he was not nearly so cynical or decadent as the Hollywood crowd I'd moved outside of.

But I don't kid myself that love can be rationally explained, or that my falling in love with my shrink is as simple as all that. The thing is, I'd never spoken of the traumatic things that had happened to me. I'd kept them all inside, where they fermented and stewed, making me an internal mess, even though I functioned well enough. When I'd finally begun to trust Stanley enough to show him the various skeletons in the family closet, the confessions came as such a relief, and I felt so grateful for the opportunity to rid myself of them, that love was only a short step away.

Though I must admit that, physically, Stanley was a far cry from the screen Adonises I'd grown up with. I was used to classically handsome men-tall, dark, burly yet graceful, with regular features and perennially suntanned-looking complexions. Stanley, on the other hand, was short, with kinky hair, a somewhat pudgy body that was cuddly but certainly not elegant, and a broad and rather loose set of lips that looked frog-like when clamped around his ever-present pipe. He was not physically beautiful-but then, I'd had my fill of physical beauty. More than my fill. And what good had it done me? It had given me colitis, amenorrhea, and migraines. Now I was after something earthy, actual, outside the realm of Tinseltown fantasy.

Again, I should stress that all this progress on my part was very gradual, and took place not without a considerable amount of backsliding and doubt. As I said, it was November when I first saw Stanley, and nothing really important happened in my therapy for the entire rest of the semester. Over Christmas vacation I went home, and was appalled to see how easily I fell back into the same old incestuous pattern with Daddy. Now, it's a truism that kids always regress when they go home-but there're greater or less degrees of it, and going back to warming my father's bed after spending the semester letting football players kiss my cheek, was a radical enough transition to set my head spinning! I wish I could say that I didn't enjoy Daddy's embraces on that two-week excursion, but the fact is I did enjoy them. If anything, I enjoyed them more in the face of my chaste months away. There were certain cravings that were still very much a part of me, and Daddy had always been the figure toward whom those cravings were directed. I was somewhat ashamed of myself as I writhed and groaned in consonance with his passion-but I didn't resist.

I returned to school as baffled as ever, and did not really get on track again until the spring. That was when my therapy really started taking off. For one thing. I'd finally gotten Stanley to believe my stories. Once he came to understand what had actually happened to me, he stopped trying to talk me out of it, and instead, began to help me cope with it. He convinced me that what I had to do was not so very different from what all young women had to do separate myself from the ties that kept me pinned to my father, and prepare myself, emotionally and physically, for other men. All women had to do it-my ties had simply been a bit more literal.

Well, that made sense to me, and, as I said, the object of my newly-released affections turned out to be none other than Stanley himself. Now, any shrink will tell you that it's inadvisable for a therapist to allow a patient to fall in love with him, and downright unprofessional for the therapist to fall in love with the patient in return-but it happens all the time. It's a perfect set-up, after all. Aside from the emotional intensity of two people sitting there talking about real gut issues, there's often a directly sexual element. Shrinks, after all, are probably no less voyeuristic-if anything, more so-than the rest of us, and since a lot of what they hear from their patients is of an erotic nature, they have plenty of opportunity to get turned on. Well, my life story provided a veritable bonanza of sexual imaginings, and at some point it started getting through to me that Stanley was probably excited by my confessions-though, for a while at least, he did an admirable job of concealing the excitement. But strangely, I found myself beginning to play into that excitement! I started embellishing my stories, making the details more graphic. Basically, I was being a cock-tease, though I was not quite conscious of it at the time. In retrospect, however, I realize I was seducing Stanley Epstein, my somewhat funny-looking but totally sympathetic and teddy-bearish psychotherapist.

The inevitable happened one fair afternoon in May, right there on the analytic couch. I'd lain on that couch countless times before, but this time it was for real. I still remember what I was wearing-a crisp linen skirt, bone-colored, a pair of loafers, no stockings, a simple blouse. It was the day I'd decided to tell Stanley about the spankings my father sometimes administered. Now, don't let anyone ever tell you that shrinks are immune from kinks. Stanley liked the spanking story. He was not at all sadistic, you understand, he simply liked the story as a fantasy. Well, as I was telling it, I could sense his arousal. His face reddened somewhat and his teeth clamped down on the stem of his pipe. He wanted me, and I realized more than ever how badly I wanted him. All I had to do was spread my arms toward him on the couch, and instantly he was beside me, kneeling on the rug next to the sofa, burying his head against my bosom, and kissing me passionately, wildly. He was both comforting me and ravishing me, and I responded to both sides of the situation.

He worked his way onto the couch alongside me. I helped him up, holding his chubby face in my hands and covering it with kisses. I put my arms around him and felt the comforting bulk and softness of his very down-to-earth body. He had neither the broad chest of my father, nor the rock-hard flesh of the young men we'd shared-but he felt reassuring and good in my arms. And I could feel my own body responding to him as passionately as if he had been Valentino.

We kissed long and deep. In a frenzy, he reached for my breasts, for the buttons of my blouse. I neither resisted nor wanted to. I went for his shirt. I got some buttons undone and felt the kinky hair of his chest. It excited me and enhanced my image of him as a teddy-bear. Rolling and bouncing on the narrow couch, we clumsily fought our way out of our clothes. Shoes clunked against the floor. Seams strained as we struggled free of garments. When we were naked, I beheld Stanley's body in all its appealing imperfection-the slightly rounded shoulders, the somewhat too thick waist, the pudgy thighs. Yet I was more drawn to him that I had ever been to anybody. He was erect, and I was gratified to see that his need matched my own. But it was not simply the sight of his ready phallus that enflamed me. I just wanted him. He had been kind to me, I had shared secrets and pain with him, and now we were about to perform the act that would seal all the other intimacies.

I lay back on the couch and waited for him to enter me. I was seething yet strangely calm, certain of fulfillment. There was neither hurry nor teasing in the way he installed himself between my legs. Our eyes were open as we linked.

I started climaxing almost at the first feel of him against me. I had been abstinent since my Christmas visit home, and my physical need was at an all-time peak. I had five months of pent-up longing locked away inside me, and the first bit of sensation unlocked the floodgates. But it was more than that it was a consummation in the truest sense of the word-the sealing of a compact, a beginning as well as a summation.

Though my insides were quivering, I lay there quite still under him. The moment was so lovely that I simply wanted to receive it. There would be time, I knew, to play the aggressor, to be active, assertive. For now I simply wanted him, wanted his motion, his pace. His kinky hair was against my face as he rocked, and I relished the smell of it. I put my arms against his furry back and let my fingers rest lightly against the skin of his shoulders, now moistening with sweat. I savored every motion, every contour, and when he finally reached his own climax, it triggered me yet a notch higher. I made up for five months of physical loneliness-and began to make up for a life of emotional loneliness-on that glorious afternoon....

Well, to put it mildly, that afternoon on the couch with my shrink raised certain difficult issues. The first of these questions was whether my therapy should continue, and was Stanley still in a position to be effective as my shrink. With only slight hesitation, I answered yes to both questions. I didn't kid myself that I was suddenly "cured." I knew I had a long way to go to undo the wounds that Daddy and Hollywood had inflicted, and I wasn't about to give up therapy, which I saw as my best, and maybe my only, route to normalcy. As to switching therapists, that would have been horribly upsetting to me. You see, I was terribly afraid of losing Stanley. Even though I was beautiful and he was homely, even though I was fabulously wealthy and he was just beginning to make his way, I was the insecure one in the relationship. I had never had a healthy contact with anyone in my life, and I was terrified that Stanley would slip away, that I'd blow it somehow, that circumstances would deprive me of him. Therapy would be of use to me, I argued, only if I felt truly, comfortable with the therapist-and why waste months trying to get comfortable with someone new?

So it was decided that things would continue as before. Well, not exactly as before. Neither Stanley nor I was naive enough to believe that our lovemaking was a momentary lapse that would never occur again. No, we had become lovers, and we would stay lovers, at least for as long as the mutual attraction lasted. We were not about to sacrifice our passion at the altar of psychology.

So therapy resumed, but with certain new issues involved. As my attachment to Stanley grew, so did my gnawing sense of having betrayed Daddy. I knew that feeling was ridiculous, but I couldn't shake it. I knew that Daddy's claim to me had never been legitimate-had always, in fact, been perverse and horribly selfish-but still, it was not so easy to break away from that claim. Stanley did all he could to help me-he now had a vested interest in doing so, since, for as long as my unnatural bond with Daddy continued, he could never truly possess my affections.

We spent many sessions discussing the whole concept of betrayal. Had my father betrayed my mother by marrying her for convenience? Or had my mother betrayed my father by refusing to recognize the realness of his love, even through his indifferent facade? And which of my parents had betrayed me more-my mother, who had never wanted anything to do with me; or my father, who wanted everything to do with me, who used me as a buffer between himself and the demands of the real world, who used me as a defenseless means of perpetuating his own myths about himself? One thing was certain however much I betrayed Daddy, I would still be more sinned against than sinning, and that gave me some moral leeway.

What made it all the more difficult, however, was the fact that Daddy was entering a stage of real decline. Career-wise, he was washed up. There's no other way to put it. He was past the point of getting the father or uncle roles. He'd never been a good enough actor to do a decent job in character parts. He was even largely excluded from the opportunity of doing cameos-an opportunity that's generally embarrassing anyway-because not enough people remembered him. Too much time had passed since he'd been in his prime, and unlike, say, Bette Davis or Spencer Tracy, he hadn't found a graceful way of bridging the gap between Young Superstar and Grand Old Figure. He had more money than he could ever spend, as well as a certain amount of lingering prestige among the Hollywood establishment-but still, he'd never been truly happy when he wasn't working, and he simply couldn't get work.

Not surprisingly, his social fortunes ran parallel to his professional fortunes. He'd become more and more of a recluse. For a while, he was still invited to parties, but chose not to go. Then he stopped being invited. His initial hesitancy about socializing had to do with his depression about his fading career-he didn't want to talk with people if he had no good news to report, nothing to be enthused about. When people stopped inviting him, it was because they knew he had no good news, and they realized he would be a depressing presence, a kind of spectre undermining the giddy hopes of a new generation of go-getters. If people knew they had the fate of Drew Stanford to look forward to, many would have given up before they'd ever started trying.

Sexually, my father was faring no better than he was professionally or socially. The pretty young men no longer frequented the mansion. If Drew Stanford couldn't even get work for himself, what good could he possibly do them? They were better off looking and kneeling-elsewhere. As for women, Daddy seemed to have lost his taste for them somewhere along the line (except for me, that is). Perhaps he simply thought he'd already done everything a male could possibly do with a female-to do more would lead to deflating redundancies. Maybe he shunned women because they reminded him too poignantly of his blown marriage. Or maybe-though he'd deny it right up to the grave-he was essentially gay all along, and the macho womanizing had only been a sham.

In any case, Drew Stanford had become a pretty pathetic figure, and by betraying him now I was putting myself in the unsavory position of kicking a man when he's down. But whenever I'd get into too maudlin a state about it, Stanley would remind me of all I had to be angry about-the defloration, of course, but also the deprivation of peer contact, the bizarreness of my education, the paralyzing control he had exerted over me. I alternated constantly between pity and rage, and it was quite a conflict, believe me.

In the meantime, you understand, I was still taking a full course and getting closer to my college degree. Crazy as I was, there was one thing for me to major in-psychology. Psychology, I hoped, would help me better understand my own neuroses, as well as draw me still closer to Stanley, with whom, by now, I was hopelessly in love. My therapy went on through my entire college career, interrupted only during certain vacations when Stanley and I went skiing at Aspen or surfing at Big Sur.

There were also certain vacations that I spent at home, but there was never again a vacation like that first college Christmas I spent with Daddy. I never had sex with him again-well, not until he was on what proved to be his deathbed, but that comes a few years later. For now, my vacations at home were relatively staid. I watched Daddy get drunk, and we had long heart-to-heart talks. Daddy would occasionally get incredibly sentimental, and start blubbering and crying while we chatted. This was another aspect of his growing patheticness, and it was pretty hard to take. I had told him that I'd been in therapy, and surprisingly enough, that seemed to make him feel guilty. I guess it was finally getting through to him how much he'd messed me up. Not that he was in a position to do anything about it now. He just drank and blubbered. Sometimes he'd make sexual advances, and when I repelled them, he'd get morbid and remorseful again, calling himself a monster. If nothing else, he was gaining some self-insight. He'd tell me I was right to resist him-and I'd wonder why the hell I hadn't realized that sooner.

I felt reborn every time a home vacation ended and I could return to school-and Stanley. In resisting Daddy, I felt I'd made another stride toward normalcy-and my reward was the passionate reunion that Stanley and I never failed to have. I realized that even a homely man can lift a woman to incredible heights of erotic transport if the right emotions are there. I was getting cured of Hollywood.

So all in all, college really was the best time of my life. And, like almost all college students, I was very nervous about what I'd do, where I'd turn, when college was over. As my final semester began, I started to panic. It would be only too easy to return to Daddy, to the security of the giant house, and to undo all the growing that school and therapy had accomplished. I needed a firm resolve to cement my plans, to give me direction-but I wasn't yet strong enough to really take control of my destiny, to plot my own next move. Fortunately, Stanley came to the rescue.

He wanted to move out of Los Angeles-to Seattle-and to take me with him! He'd set up a private practice, and hire me as an assistant. I'd have a job, my own salary, and as much independence as I thought I could handle. It sounded almost too good to be true.

But there was one problem. Seattle was a long way from Hollywood. I'd be farther away from Daddy than I'd ever been. And I'd be abandoning him just when he needed me most. I wrestled with the decision for weeks, and then I decided: Screw Daddy. I went to Seattle with Stanley.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The Seattle phase was one of the most placid of my life, and one of the main factors in its pleasantness was the absence of Daddy. He was far away, out of sight and to a large degree out of mind. If not totally free of him, I at least had shrugged him off as a constant preoccupation.

And I had an exciting new career to plunge into. As a fresh college graduate, I didn't get to do any of the heavy shrinking at Stanley's new office, but I did get to do preliminary screenings, help interpret Rorschach tests, look over transcripts of taped sessions-enough to let me know that there were plenty of crazy people out there, and I wasn't alone in my nuttiness. Day by day I made new discoveries about the practice of psychology, and about myself. I found new potential for loving in myself. I grew increasingly close with Stanley. In Seattle, I had no history, sordid or otherwise-I invented myself from day to day. I determined how people would see me, what they'd think about me. It was a fresh start, and the freedom of it was invigorating.

But I don't suppose there's any such thing as an absolutely fresh start, and I was still toting certain emotional baggage around with me. I still thought about Daddy more than I wanted to, more than Stanley thought was good for me.

But the fact was, Daddy had become a cause for real concern. He was starting to fade fast, and I had to confront the fact that my departure was probably hastening his decline. I had a lot of guilt to deal with about that. Partly to ease this guilt, I insisted that Daddy have a full-time nurse move into the mansion with him. I further insisted that the nurse furnish me with full written reports of his condition at least twice a week. Thus, I could be sure that Daddy was being looked after, and also, I'd share in his suffering, at least from afar.

The nurse's reports, which were unrelentingly lugubrious, never failed to upset me. Much of the material was crazily repetitive-Daddy drank too much, was troubled by insomnia, scorned solid food and was on the verge of malnutrition. Gradually, I however, the bad news got worse, and started showing signs of emotional collapse as well as physical decline. He began falling down the stairs regularly. The falling started off as a purely accidental result of his drunkenness; but once he'd realized he could take header after header without hurting himself too badly, he got it in his head to try and make a film comeback as the world's first geriatric stuntman. So he started throwing himself down the stairs on purpose, for practice. He also tried climbing out his window onto the rooftop, and various other death-defying stunts. The thing is, he only thought the falls didn't hurt him, because he was too drunk to realize what was going on-the nurse reported that he was bruised from head to foot, with sprained ankles, twisted knees, and a battered coccyx.

Aside from this bizarrely self-punishing behavior, he was falling into a more and more delusory obsession with the past. Every night he set up the projector and watched his old movies. He thought he was at the opening night gala. He dressed in a tuxedo. He pretended that his director and co-star were sitting beside him. He seemed to think a long line of limousines was waiting outside, along with hordes of screaming fans. For all his imagined excitement, however, he never managed to stay awake through an entire movie, but nodded into a drunken sleep midway through the first reel. Stanley theorized that that was as close as Daddy would ever come to an honest appraisal of his own acting abilities.

The news of Daddy's growing infirmity cast a certain shadow over my days, of course, but I had my own to worry about, and I tried to put him out of my mind at least during the working hours. And during the intimate hours with Stanley. In retrospect, I realized that I had never really enjoyed sex before Stanley. Oh, I'd craved it to be sure, and I'd been relieved when I got it-but that's not quite the same thing as saying I enjoyed it. Enjoyment has to do with more than the simple scratching of an itch, as it were. It should contain a more thorough satisfaction, an awareness of give and take, of freedom, of gratitude. Stanley was the first man who ever really took care of me sexually. My other lovers, especially Daddy, had considered their own pleasure first, last, and always, and had pleasured me only incidentally. I was glad for whatever I got, since I didn't know any better. But with Stanley it was different. He would spend long diligent stints down under, servicing me in a purely unselfish manner. (Well, maybe it wasn't purely unselfish. Stanley did have a bit of an oral fixation, as his constant pipe-smoking indicated, and I guess he also was gratified by the pacifying fullness in his mouth.) In any case, I knew a physical and emotional bliss such as I had never known, or even been equipped to imagine, and I longed for it to continue undisturbed, uncomplicated.

But that was too much to hope for. Like many sick people, Daddy realized that his weakness gave him a certain manipulative power. You can't say no to a dying man, and though Daddy was some months away from his final demise, there was no question that the process of fading had begun. He was becoming decrepit but no less malicious. Despite all his disclaimers, despite all his pious prattle about wanting me to be happy, he was distressed about my being with Stanley. He would have been distressed about my being with anybody. What enraged him was that he should grow old and die, while I should go on living and enjoying! His ego was so immense, his possessiveness so rampant, that he actually believed everyone-or at least those closest to him-should be entombed along with him! If my father had his way, he would have been buried along with his wealth, his jewelry, furniture, copies of his films, pictures of himself, photos of his former lovers maybe even with the bodies of his former lovers! There was something downright Egyptian in my father's desire to take things out of this world to commemorate his passing-he was like a Hollywood King Tut!

But I was determined not to be buried along with Daddy. I was still incredibly attached to him, of course, and the spectre of his imminent croaking was a heavy burden on me. Sometimes I simply broke down and cried contemplating it. A new report from the nurse never failed to set me trembling. Now he had taken to talking to himself. There were days when he made caca in the bed. The whole thing was revolting.

Then, in the spring of the year he died, he sent for me. He sent me a truly pathetic letter, which I have always kept. The letter said:

Dear Lara, Well, as you may have guessed, I'm in pretty miserable shape. Everything is catching up with me at once. Time, of course-but more than that. The years of drinking, carousing, staying up through the night and so forth. I always prided myself on having a big candle, Lara, but still, if you bum it at both ends....Speaking of burning at both ends, my rectum seems to be going sour on me. Quite a humiliating turn of events. But let's not be morbid, child. I'll tell you why I'm writing. I want to see you, child. Oh, I could make a really desperate plea, tell you I'll be dead in a week or something like that-but it's not in my nature to manipulate, to tug at heartstrings. No, I fully expect to have at least a couple more months to live. But, Lara, it'll be all downhill from here, and I want to see you while I'm lucid, before this slippery thing called intelligence slides away from me altogether. And another thing, my dear-I've never met your young man, and I must say I'm rather curious. I'm jealous, too, if you must know. Still, there comes a time to bow out quietly, and I guess it's my time. But I would like to meet the lucky fellow-and, if it wouldn't seem too crass a gesture coming from a profane old son-of-a-bitch like me, I'd like to give the two of you my blessing. You know, Lara, you've always held the biggest place in my heart and in my-well, let's just leave it at heart. Excitement is bad for me these days-not that the lack of it is exactly doing wonders for me. In any case, my dear, please tell me that you'll come to visit. I yearn to see you before these tired old eyes are forever veiled over with the final grayness of absolute decrepitude. But as I said, it's up to you.

Love, Your adoring father

Up to me, indeed! Who could say no to a plea like that? The letter threw me into utter turmoil. I didn't want to go, I was afraid to go-afraid that a confrontation with Daddy would shatter my newfound and still fragile equilibrium-and yet how could I refuse?

I talked it over with Stanley, but that didn't do much good. Stanley pointed out how utterly manipulative the letter was, and though I couldn't disagree, neither could I say that the manipulation wasn't effective-diabolically so. Stanley also pointed out the letter's sexual undertones-Daddy didn't need to point out that he had a big candle, nor did he have to refer to the lack of excitement in his life. Stanley felt that, as grotesque and un-likely as it might have seemed, Daddy was propositioning me from his deathbed! This I took with a grain of salt. Stanley, after all, had a Certain understandable resentment toward Daddy, as well as a certain jealousy. Stanley did have faith in me, but as a shrink, he realized that I hadn't yet-and maybe wouldn't ever-absolutely break the morbid ties I had with my father. Once I was in his thrall, Stanley reasoned, anything could happen. All my progress could be undone, all my confidence could be undermined. Stanley counseled me not to go.

But, for the first time in our relationship, I didn't lake Stanley's advice. I had to go. It wasn't that I felt I owed it to Daddy, but that I owed it to myself-why should I burden myself with the guilt of denying what might possibly Daddy's last request? Better to grant it and get it over with.

Well, if I was determined to go, Stanley's next suggestion was that he at least be allowed to come along. He wanted to be near me to give me support, to keep up my resolve-and maybe he also had a certain perverse curiosity about meeting Daddy, about confronting the monster who had made my early life the psychoanalyst's nightmare that it was. Well, Daddy had specifically said he'd like to meet my "young man," so I didn't see any harm in having Stanley accompany me. In fact, I was grateful for his concern and companionship.

Still, I couldn't avoid a creeping sense of misgiving about the whole thing. The chemistry, I felt, would simply be wrong. I feared that Stanley and Daddy would hate each other, that I would regress and make a fool of myself. It would be a fearful but-I told myself-worthwhile experiment.

Daddy sent the limo to meet us at the airport and bring us to the mansion. It was a nervous ride, let me tell you. Stanley had grown up poor, in Newark, New Jersey, and couldn't help feeling a bit overwhelmed by the estates as we rode through the ritzier sections. The differences in our backgrounds had never been an issue before, but I sensed his discomfort now, and it occurred to me that maybe he shouldn't have come. Well, it was too late now. The ride, for different reasons, was also difficult for me. I viewed Hollywood with a curious blend of loathing and nostalgia. Childhood is still childhood, however wretched it might be, and I can't imagine anyone not feeling at least an ambivalent affection for the place he or she grew up. I got a lump in my throat as we passed the gorgeous hedgerows, the gracious palms, the freshly-painted wrought-iron gates of the vast estates.

And when we finally pulled onto the grounds of the Stanford mansion, the lump in the throat intensified until I could hardly breathe, and tears sprang to my eyes. Though Daddy himself may have been crumbling, the estate itself was as spiffy as ever. The grounds had been admirably maintained. The shrubs were trimmed as carefully and symmetrically as the finest sculpture. The trees were all freshly pruned and loamed. The flowers were brilliant in their orderly rows. The lawns had the placid perfection of golf greens. As for the house itself, it was every bit as splendid as I remembered it. Stately columns supported the portico. Brightly painted shutters flanked every one of the dozens of windows. The brass knob and knocker of the front door flashed fresh-polished in the sun.

The chauffeur opened the door of the limousine for us, and we headed for the entrance. My heart was pounding so that I felt the pulse in my ears. Stanley ushered me along with a palm in the small of my back, and I was grateful for the support. I needed it.

I reached for the front doorknob-and then pulled my hand back. I decided to ring the bell instead. It was no longer my house-I was a guest, and I wanted that kept clear. I had to keep my distance, or I would be lost.

It was the nurse who answered the bell, most of the domestic staff having been dismissed. She was a middle-aged woman, rather severe-looking, though not without compassion. No doubt she disapproved of Daddy, and of everything connected with Daddy-including me-but she had seen enough to be tolerant of almost anything-particularly in the face of near death. She gave us a well-intentioned but rather artificial smile and motioned us in.

"It's nice of you to come," she said, but the hint of reproach was clear in her voice. What she was really asking was why didn't I come more often? I inferred from this that Daddy had not blabbed to her about the nature of our relationship-and I was glad of that. I don't think I could have faced this Angel of Mercy with the taint of incest in the open between us.

In any case, the nurse told us that Daddy was in his study, and then she tactfully withdrew.

I don't really know what I expected, in terms of Daddy's condition and appearance. I couldn't help fearing the worst-that he'd be sloppy, feeble, senile. His letter had been lucid enough, but I feared that the lucidity was fleeting....However, when I tremulously opened the study door and poked my head in, I found Daddy to be in far better condition than I'd feared-everything being relative. First of all, he was sitting up, which was a good sign in itself. He was wearing an elegant satin smoking jacket over his pajamas, and the smoking jacket showed no signs of having been drooled on or otherwise abused. His hair, though totally white by now, had hardly thinned, and still had some of its former waviness. His face was still handsome, though the handsomeness had now to be inferred through the wrinkles and through the sallow complexion of the heavy drinker who never goes outdoors. Only the eyes betrayed the severity of Daddy's decline-they were horribly weary. So striking was the tragic effect of his eyes, it seemed that when he died, he would do so simply because he had seen enough.

I took all this in, you understand, in the first instant I looked inside the study door. In the next instant, Daddy looked up, recognized me, and motioned me toward him with all the enthusiasm his weakened arms could muster. I flew to him and embraced him as he sat, Stanley trailing into the room behind me. The hug was tearful and lasted a long time. I know this may be horrible to say, but in the midst of it, I almost forgot about Stanley altogether. I was actually surprised to see him standing there when I broke out of the clinch with my father. Then I recovered my presence of mind and made the introductions.

Daddy started getting out of his chair as he extended his hand to Stanley. Stanley and I both motioned to him not to bother to stand, but Daddy was insistent. In the first moment, I was inclined to ascribe this gesture to graciousness on Daddy's part, but then I saw into his true motive. Full of bravado to the end, he wanted to make it obvious how much taller he was than Stanley. To make the point absolutely clear, he stood up perfectly straight-which must have cost him quite an effort. But it was true-Daddy did tower over Stanley. Not only that, but even in his much-reduced stature, he was far broader through the chest and shoulders. Now, I'd always known that Stanley was short and rather slightly built-but next to Daddy he looked downright puny. I was somewhat embarrassed at the perception, but tried to shrug it off. After all, many a woman's beau looks puny compared to her father, and it doesn't always have to do with such straightforward quantities as height and girth.

But, all things considered, the introductions went pretty smoothly. Daddy and Stanley resented each other profoundly-profoundly enough so that they could be civil to each other on the surface. Daddy inquired as to our trip. We inquired as to his health. It was a safe conversation, a warmer-upper.

It had been decided that Stanley and I would spend three days at the family mansion. That seemed long enough time to work off some of the daughterly obligations, but short enough to prevent things from getting really hairy. So we played it hour by hour.

Dinner the first night went quite smoothly. Daddy was in quite good spirits, and regaled Stanley for hours with anecdotes of the Hollywood high-life. Stanley, being from Newark, relished these tales of how the other half lived. In fact, Daddy and Stanley seemed to hit it off so well, that for a while I was the one who was inclined to be jealous.

But in the long run, I was the center of attention. Daddy wanted know all about my new job, my new life. He seemed genuinely interested, and I was genuinely happy. That night, in bed, when I snuggled up to my companion-Stanley, not Daddy-I felt more secure and more adult than I ever had.

It couldn't last, of course. The next day Daddy was in a foul mood. Maybe it was just a pathetic rage that he had slept alone while Stanley and I had slept together. In any case, he didn't even seem like the man who'd charmed us both the night before. He grumbled, grumped, complained. He started drinking at breakfast and got progressively more abusive and less coherent through the day. If he wanted to make a truly depressing spectacle of himself, he succeeded grandly. His behavior put me in a foul mood. It was astounding how much power Daddy still had over me, how intimately his own moods affected mine. My self-esteem crumbled as I watched his dignity collapse. That night I was a wreck. I sobbed quietly in Stanley's arms for hours. I was like a child again, helpless and baffled.

The next day, the last of our visit, Daddy was in still another mood. This mood was actually a kind of perverse hybrid of the moods of the previous two days. On this day, he was spunky and outgoing-but there was a real bitterness in it. He was lucid, all right, but the constant refrain of his lucidity was sarcasm. He kept finding ways to refer to Stanley's height. He made veiled innuendoes about various sexual embarrassments he'd subjected me to. He laughed, but his laugh was a witch-like cackle. He Smiled, but his smile had venom in it.

His behavior made both Stanley and me terrifically uncomfortable, and we were both relieved when, after lunch, Daddy announced that he was tired and would take a nap. He hobbled off to his room, and we both heaved a sigh. But he'd put us in such touchy moods that we didn't even want to be with each other. Stanley announced that he wanted to take a walk in the garden, and I felt no inclination to go along. Instead, I went to the study, put a cold washcloth across my forehead, and lay back on the couch to read. In light of the events which followed I can't help thinking that all of Daddy's behavior was diabolically calculated, that he knew Stanley and I would need some solitude after his sarcastic onslaught. Daddy, I believe, wanted to divide and conquer....

I had already been on the sofa long enough to read a paragraph, when a heartrending groan issued forth from the direction of Daddy's room. The groan sounded like death itself. In a reaction that was faster than thought, I sprang up from the sofa-the book flying from my lap and the washcloth flying from my head-and started running down the corridor to Daddy's room. I fully expected to find him in a convulsion, or even in his death throes. But he was lying back still and quiet, looking at the ceiling, alert but sad. Whatever the spasm was-or had pretended to be-it had passed. He looked over at me with a wistful smile and said, "Oh, Lara, I'm sorry to've disturbed you. It was only a dream. A dream of my own death, accompanied by the most wrenching pain in my bowels. I wonder which came first-the dream or the pain? Well, it doesn't matter. But it's good of you to come running like that. You do care about me then?"

Now, I'd been furious at Daddy all day, but seeing him there, so (apparently) helpless, so softly conciliatory-well, I could hardly stay angry. "Of course I do, Daddy," I said. "You know I do."

His smile softened another notch. His face became almost saintly. "Yes, I suppose I should know it. But you know, sometimes I act so damnably, I don't see how you can care. I don't mean to act badly, you know. Do you forgive me, Lara?"

I nodded my head yes, tears starting to my eyes. Daddy was putting on quite a performance. This was one of his oldest tricks, but it still worked. He'd act so inconsistently that you didn't know what the hell to think; then, when you were most scattered, he'd come up with an unexpected apology that would disarm you altogether.

"You know, my dear," he continued, his voice soft and gravelly, "I do try not to be bitter. I try to accept things with grace. But an old man loses everything. Fame, loved ones, abilities. It's hard not to lash out. There's just so little pleasure left."

As he made this final remark, he subtly glanced down past his chest along the bedclothes. The glance was so fleeting that my own gaze followed it almost subliminally-until I saw an unmistakable bulge in the sheet in the vicinity of Daddy's you-know-what'sis. The old codger wasn't quite done yet.

Despite myself, I swallowed hard at the perception of the sheeted erection. I didn't want any part of it, I told myself-but still, I was interested and impressed that it was there. I had a hard time tearing my eyes away. Daddy's indirect plea-"so little pleasure left"-kept echoing in my brain.

Finally I looked away, turning my gaze back to Daddy's face. He was wearing a small smile that, while understated and sad, was undeniably sly. "Do it for me, Lara," he said. "Just this one last time."

My breath caught, my lips clenched together, my entire body stiffened, and I shook my head no. Somehow, the full horror of incestuous contact flooded back on me. I'd been away from it long enough, and had grown enough in the meantime, so the blot had almost been erased. Now Daddy was asking me to inscribe it afresh. I shook my head again and again-yet my eyes inexorably wandered back down to the bulge in the sheet.

"Only with your hands," said Daddy, cajolingly, almost pleadingly. "That's all I ask. You needn't even undress. Nothing more intimate than the feel of your hands for a few short moments."

I shook my head, my entire body beginning to tremble. But my resolve was weakening, and I knew that Daddy could sense it. His hand moved slowly out from his side and took hold of my wrist. His grip was not rough, but neither was irresistible. He began exerting a steady pressure, pulling my hand toward the bulge. It was a tug of war, but I was gradually losing ground. With his free hand, he lifted the sheet-just enough to admit our linked fingers. Even before my reluctant hand made contact with his body, I felt the heat coming off it.

Finally the back of my hand brushed up against the phallus. There was something unreal about it all-this incongruously firm and assertive erection, hidden under a wrinkled sheet, sprouting from the loins of a decrepit and pathetic old man. It was touching, if you like your sentiment perverse. I could resist no longer. I unlocked my fingers and took hold of the neglected member. Daddy realized then that he had won me over, that he had to do no more persuading. Accordingly he released my wrist and settled back to enjoy. The small smile stayed fixed on his lips, but his eyes glazed over with delight.

My revulsion lasted for some time, even as I became more involved in my toying with Daddy's penis. But the revulsion soon faded. I felt almost good about doing what I was doing. Intimacy is relative, after all, and after all that Daddy and I had been through together, was this really such a transgression? Would it have been any more admirable to retreat from our illicit but not undoable contact altogether, and deprive him of one of the last pleasures he would ever know? Morality is a horribly complex thing-particularly once the first complexity has been introduced. If you keep it simple all along, it can stay always simple; as soon as complexity invades, it brings other complications with it, and things are never simple again....Thus, it was a pleasure, though not a simple one, for me to work off Daddy's passive passion that final time. It was the final filial act, and it was fitting that I should take no direct pleasure from it, but only a reflected inner warmth from the contemplation of his manhood. But that reflected warmth was considerable pleasure in itself, let me assure you. The bulk and firmness of Daddy was exciting in my hand, and I felt my orifice begin to prepare itself for the consummation that it wouldn't come to know.

I continued my manipulations, and at some point Daddy's passivity became less absolute. He rocked slowly in the bed, lifting his hips as high as he could-a very limited lift compared to the kingly thrusts of his prime. Then he swept the sheet off the bed, exposing his shaft to my gaze-and to his own. He propped his head higher on the pillows and stared fondly down at his proud pecker. I can't blame him for staring at it, even though it was blatantly narcissistic. But it was, after all, the best-preserved part of him by far, and if there was anything that might, even momentarily, take him back to the glory of his manhood, it would be the sight of this unflagging dork. Besides, he knew oppressively well that he didn't have many erections left in him, nor many hand-jobs to look forward to. The present episode might very well be his penis's last hurrah, and he didn't want to miss a trick. He stared intently at the center of the action.

I suppose he would have liked it to go on forever, as letting it end was actually a prefiguration of death. But he could only take so much stimulation, and I could tell he was nearing orgasm by the way he squirmed, swallowed, and developed facial tics. I was excited by his losing control, and I worked him all the more enthusiastically. He started to groan as the last plateau was reached. Then, just as he was nearing orgasm, he let out a loud and rowdy howl of pleasure. It was a coyote-like scream that contained both the unimpeded joy of sexuality and the crushing pain of age and loss. The end of the scream was accompanied by the beginning of his ejaculation-His insides, it seemed, had lost their elasticity-his prostate gland no longer had the power to spurt. Instead, he oozed, gushed slowly forth a large and viscous amount of semen that flowed downward and covered my hand to the wrist. Daddy sighed and let his head rest against the pillow. I fondly held the gradually retreating phallus....

I was still holding it when the bedroom door flew open and Stanley came barging in. Daddy's banshee howl had reached him in the garden, and he'd come running to see what was wrong. He was breathing hard from fear and exertion, and his face was flushed. His face flushed even more when he saw my hand wrapped around Daddy's sperm-soaked penis. He stared at the junction of fingers and genital, then he stared at my face, then he snarled, then he turned on his heels and stormed out.

I was paralyzed with shame and confusion. I'd gotten so involved with Daddy, that I'd totally forgotten that maybe I shouldn't be doing it. And of course the possibility of getting caught had never entered my mind. I wanted to crawl in a hole.

I looked up at Daddy's face. He was smiling contentedly-but there was more in that smile than simple erotic satisfaction-the smile held a gloating, diabolical glee. Suddenly the whole crazy scenario became clear to me. Daddy had planned the whole thing, had engineered every detail! The groan that brought me to his room was calculated to be soft enough not to alarm Stanley. But the scream that supposedly was indicative of Daddy's ecstasy, was in fact nothing but a device to bring Stanley racing in, catching me red-handed, as it were! Daddy was trying to break us up, no question about it. He still was not resigned to the fact that other people had a right to be happy, other people could live their lives without him. He couldn't resist taking one more cruel malicious stab at ruining everything for me!

Suddenly an utter hatred welled up in my heart. I stared at Daddy with a daggered look, and then I squeezed his limp member. It was nothing like the fierce squeeze I would later give his testicles in the funeral home, but at least he could feel this one! I gave the malicious member a final yank, then let it twang back into place. Then I wiped my gooey hand on the sheet and ran out to look for Stanley.

Stanley was plenty pissed, believe me. He was jealous and he was disappointed with me. He thought he'd helped me past my problems, and there I was, back in the same old perverse pattern. I was distraught. I thought he was going to walk out on me right then and there. But I coaxed him into staying with me. Weren't incestuous infidelities better than infidelities with strangers? I reasoned. He accepted that, but said he'd leave me if it ever happened again. I promised him it never would happen again, because I never intended to see Daddy again.

And I never did. Not while he was alive at least.

EPILOGUE

Daddy didn't last long after that. I let him know that I had no intention of visiting him again, and he really didn't have much else to live for. He had old movies-but he'd already watched them so many times that he knew every word, every gesture, by heart. He barely recognized the handsome young man identified in the credits as Drew Stanford. He still had the memories of his glory days-but those memories tended to become garbled in his liquor soaked imagination. He would have liked to recall erotic episodes, but everything had blurred, he couldn't recall exactly what he'd done with whom. He couldn't match names with faces or other parts.

He drank more and more, ate less and less. He became ornerier and ornerier, and nurse after nurse stormed out of the Stanford mansion. His insomnia reached hellish proportions. His doctor administered sedatives-but only via the needle. He refused to prescribe pills, on the grounds that Drew Stanford would commit suicide if given the slightest opportunity. It had come to that.

His life was completing its circle. He had begun low, risen to the heights, and was now low again. From Scum he came, and to Scum he returned, to paraphrase Ecclesiastes. But can anyone really say his life was a failure? He gained everything, and lost everything-he knew both the thrill of success and the inevitable agony of the final failure. He embraced life more fully than most-and if his embrace was illicit, licentious, often cruel-at least it was passionate. When he died-at the foot of his marble staircase, after a terrific fall that capped a night-long drinking bout-he at least knew he had done everything he set out to do. He was smiling when the nurse discovered the corpse.

It was a shame, in a way, that Daddy had not died twenty years sooner. He would have enjoyed the pomp and publicity that would have accompanied his passing then. He would have chuckled inwardly at the hypocrisy of it all. But now, there were no displays, hypocritical or otherwise, for him to chuckle about or be flattered by. He rated nothing more than a brief obituary in the Los Angeles papers and a half-hearted spread in Variety. This lack of publicity was one of the great shames of his life-the crushing obscurity at the end of a famous life.

Only Stanley and I were present as the body was laid in the ground. I felt strangely at peace. I felt that my confrontation with Daddy's corpse in the viewing room had settled the score. (I didn't tell Stanley about that episode-not after seeing his reaction the last time I touched Daddy's genitals.) I bore him no grudge now-or none that couldn't be exorcised by writing this book. Still, I did kid myself that I'd ever be truly free of Daddy. Whatever else he was, he was my Daddy Dearest-my upbringer, my deflowerer, the bane and the balm of my existence. A Daddy like that just isn't easy to get out of your system.

THE END
Daddy Dearest ....(103k)    by Lara Stanford




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