Kingdom of Fear (19 page)

I have known a few magic moments like these—red dots on a sea-green map—and I treasure them. They are the high points of my life, my moments of total Function, when I felt like a snow leopard fighting for life on its own turf.

Whoops. Let’s not get maudlin, Doc. Don’t embarrass the breed with some drunken hillbilly hubris. The joke is over. They are coming after your heart this time, so behave accordingly. At the top of the mountain we are all snow leopards.

. . .

Right, and now let’s get back to the Witness who came into my house that night and almost put me in prison.

She was clearly a refugee from the sex film industry—a business I had covered as a journalist regrettably arousing her interest.

In 1985 I ventured to San Francisco to do an article for
Playboy
on “feminist pornography.” Nobody knew what it was, but I was telling
Playboy
what it was and that was why they gave me the assignment. Feminist porn was really just couples’ films—sex films made for couples to which you could take a date.

It was a new genre, and I had happened to run into some of the women who appeared in these films when I was in San Francisco for the Democratic Convention in ’84. They kind of adopted me. Most of the girls were at least bisexual, and they were fun. A lot of them were the stars of this new style of films. Juliet Anderson, later famous as Aunt Peg, was a big one. Veronica Hart was another—she is still making films and is pretty good at her trade.

. . .

Now we arrive at the complicated part of the story.

I understand situations like the one I am about to tell you, and I know how strange they can get. I have spent more time in the belly of that beast than I can ever admit, and certainly not in print. I have never felt tempted to tell these stories in public—or even in private, for that matter, except on some moonless nights when I start feeling lonely and sentimental and strung out on combat or pussy or fear, like our old friend from Arkansas.

But tonight might be that kind of night, so what the hell?

. . .

I had never heard of Gail Palmer. I didn’t need to hear about her, but I got a letter one day telling me that I was off, that I didn’t really
get it. I had written that the new feminist pornography was going to take over; she wrote arguing that I didn’t understand the sex business, and she said she wanted to explain it to me. I didn’t give a fuck.

I got several more letters from her, leading up to the infamous Hallmark card (which my defense attorneys later presented in court) that was full of lewd, tiny, very dense handwriting. The front of it said, “Sex is a dirty business.” When you opened it up, it read: “But somebody has to do it.” She took up every white surface inside the card with her little tense handwriting, telling me all the fun we could have—more fun than a barrel of monkeys in heat—and that she could really straighten me out about what I knew and thought about the sex business.

Meanwhile, she had also sent me a thick sheaf of press clippings and two films. In one, she is wearing a bodysuit and skipping rope in a high office building, looking out on what appears to be Long Beach Harbor. While she is skipping rope, she is singing to her own little song, repeating the stanzas once or twice:

Porno queen, porno queen
It’s not a seamy scene
Porno queen, porno queen
You think that sounds funny?
Then why am I
Making so much money?

It was sickening. She thought it was a very sexy come-on and that she was irresistible, but she was wrong.

I got another letter not long afterward, telling me she would be in town in February and would be staying at the Stonebridge Inn in Snowmass, and that she wanted to get together with me. Her presumption was as telling as the rest of it. I had a lot of sex-film girls coming on to me during that period. A lot of people had noticed what I had done for girls like Bambi and Jo Ann at the O’Farrell. I was a favorite there—I was the people’s Night Manager.

I didn’t think much about Gail Palmer’s upcoming visit. But Deborah, my majordomo, put it on the calendar, just in pencil—I guess
she thought I wasn’t having enough fun. Which could have been true, but Gail Palmer didn’t fit the bill; I had no interest in her—a big, hefty hustler—or in her side of the story.

. . .

On the night of Georgetown vs. Syracuse—a big basketball game—Tim Charles, an old friend and a Georgetown fan, came over to watch the game and to fix my Macintosh amplifier. There were two exterior fuses on the back of the amp, and I somehow knew, or sensed, that there was a third interior fuse, which Tim did not believe. He refused to give up the idea that he knew better, so he took the amp apart on the kitchen floor, like a watch all in pieces. Semmes Luckett, the grandson of the great Confederate Admiral Rafael Semmes, was also here—he was here all the time.

I was in a work frenzy, still trying to finish
Songs of the Doomed,
which had recently been interrupted by Floyd Watkins and the giant porcupine. Cat, my assistant from the University of Florida, was here as well. We had the whole book spread out on the living room table. Cat was in charge of keeping the three manuscript copies identical—they changed every day, and the changes had to be transferred to the other two. I was not plotting to seize her, but I was thinking that later we could go in the hot tub together and have some fun. I had just finished an article for some women’s magazine, like
Elle
—it was sort of a celebratory moment. I wanted to clear the house and unwind for a night.

There are some subtle details in this story that you have to appreciate to understand what happened. I wanted to watch the Georgetown game—I would have watched it anyway with just Cat; she was fun to watch sports with because she would bet—but then Tim or Semmes brought up the fact that the Grammys were coming on after the game; Jimmy Buffett was going to be on and they wanted to watch it. I didn’t want to watch the fucking Grammys and did not plan to.

Meanwhile, the amplifier was still in pieces on the floor. It was not going to get fixed until Tim figured out that there was an internal fuse, which was very deep in the middle. I knew that, Tim did not, and Semmes didn’t care. Semmes was drinking a lot of beer;
he had been planning to go into town—he wanted to go dancing. Tim was eventually going home to dinner and his wife, Carol Ann.

The game was very good—a two-point game. Georgetown won. I was waiting for them to get the fuck out. I think we were smoking some weed. I was ready to let my hair down, but not with them around. Cat may have known what I was thinking—we hadn’t planned anything, but she probably understood it.

Tim was getting cranked up, fixated on the fucking machinery, and Semmes was getting sloppy drunk and starting to sink into the winged chair, slumped over. Semmes was not a fun drunk; he was constantly worried about his fucking probation. In my desperation, I looked up at the calendar (maybe I remembered her pending visit) and saw the note Deborah had written: “Gail Palmer. . .” It was just a quick scan—then, CLICK. I thought for a minute how Semmes had been complaining that the women in Aspen all eat shit—just a bunch of whores—nobody to go dancing with. He was a dancing fool.

It seemed like a solution, and before I thought it all the way through, I said, “Semmes, I got a solution to your fucking problem.” He had started to look like he might be discouraged over the fact that he couldn’t get a date. I was trying to push him out, edge him out, encourage him out.

He didn’t jump right on it, but I insisted.
I’ve got a date for you! This is a really hot wild woman
. . . I had the file. I showed him the press clippings. I was doing a real selling job on her—I said, “You just call her and she’ll be your date. She’ll whoop it up with you. I’ll even pay for the drinks.”

I convinced him to go in the other room and call the Witness. I could hear him talking, but I didn’t care to hear what he was saying. As far as I was concerned, he was leaving to go meet her. Suddenly he appeared at the kitchen door, leaving the phone in the living room, and said: “She wants to meet you. She wants to meet
you
before we go dancing.”

To resolve it took three different calls and three visits from Semmes to the kitchen. The Witness wanted to meet me, and I was really unhappy about that. On Semmes’s second trip to the kitchen, I finally said, “Oh fuck, all right Semmes, you tell her to get in a cab and come here but tell the cab to wait.”

She wouldn’t agree to the date without meeting me, and it pissed me off. When Semmes came back in the kitchen for the third time and said, “She wants to know if she can bring her husband,” I said, “Fuck no! Absolutely not. Not even for a drive-by.” It took half an hour more of dickering and fucking around before she accepted that.

I could see Semmes had a weird setup coming with a husband in the picture. She wanted an interview with me—she wanted to talk to me about the sex business. She thought of herself as the Ralph Nader of the sex business, and she wanted to form a partnership with me and put out a line of sex toys—perhaps a high-quality line of dildos. I wanted no part of that, of course; I had no need, no interest, and my experience with her up to that point made her nothing but a negative, dishonest face. I can see now, telling this story, that I lost control of it little by little.

. . .

About twenty minutes later, there was a knock on the door. I had arranged with Semmes—out of laziness, I guess—that he could bring her into the kitchen and I would shake hands with her, and then he was taking her off dancing. I even gave him money . . . and that is where we lost it.

I stood up and said “Hello” to the Witness, and she began babbling with all sorts of questions she wanted to ask me: “What’s your sex life like? What do you think of fever-fresh nightgowns?” Gibberish and bullshit, which I wanted no part of. “Quiet. Quiet. Be QUIET!” I said. I stressed that to Semmes, too: “She has to be quiet here.” Semmes wanted to continue watching the Grammys, and somehow the Witness ended up sitting in the armchair—just to watch the Grammys.

I kept her quiet for a while: If she started to talk, I was harsh with her—barking “Shut up.” During commercials, she would start babbling and pestering me. When she continued to ask me about my sex life, I made her read
Screwjack
out loud: “All right,” I said, “you’re curious? Here’s a story I just wrote.”

She never finished
Screwjack;
it really disturbed her. I said, “What’s wrong with you? Keep going. Can’t you read?” She read
about half of it, and said, “Wow. What the shit is this? What kind of a pervert. . .” It got to her, directly, but I forced her to continue. I knew that book would tell her something, and I could tell she learned from the experience. She was not as loud afterward. Meanwhile, we were waiting for Buffett to come on, and I was getting very edgy.

It is true that the night may have been a little boring; it was boring to me. Up to that point all kinds of yo-yos and nymphomaniacs and fiends with plenty of dope to lay out had visited my home. I have had assholes of serious magnitude, including senators, in my house. I should make a list of the most horrible assholes ever to visit . . . but if I did, Gail would not be at the top of that list. I had sympathy for her when I realized that she was being run by this “husband,” who was probably a pimp for the Detroit Lions. She was a blemish, even on the sex trade.

We were stuck in the Grammys, and I was stuck with her. Semmes was irresponsible, and I was full of annoyance—as I would be with any loud stranger that somebody else brings into my kitchen. The Witness was hard to insult; she was dumb and also professionally inured from the sex business to caring what people really thought or felt. The triple-X brand will make you a little thick-skinned after a while, like an armadillo. Maybe I’m like that.

It is a mystery why it bothered me, but this woman also had no sense of humor. She was the unwanted stranger; that was her position in the room. I didn’t say more than ten words to her—including “Be quiet.” I was damn careful to keep people and things between us. I may have shaken her hand, but that was it. I remember telling the
Aspen Times
later that I could not even have imagined having her in the hot tub with me (as she alleged I tried to), because she would have displaced too much water.

The basketball game had been interesting. The Grammys were not. This irritant had been introduced into the social fabric, but I was as much of a Southern gentleman as I could be. I knew what I was eventually going to do that night, but it was not going to be with this woman. The only question was how soon I could get her out.

I kept trying to get her away from the phone in the office—she was constantly leaving the room to call her husband “in private.” I
had appointed Semmes to watch her, but Semmes failed; I’m never going to forgive Semmes for this. It was an utter failure of a performance, as a friend and a protector. I don’t blame Tim, but he could see weird shit brewing. Tim read the situation and saw it was like a game of musical chairs.

. . .

My support system fell apart when those swine left me alone with the Witness. When Semmes got up, I said, “Goddamnit, this is your date, what are you doing? What do you mean you’re leaving?” but he just got up and left. He’d been on the nod for a long time. Tim, who had failed to fix the amplifier, was also planning to leave. I said, “Tim, you gotta take this woman somewhere. You gotta take her. . .” But he couldn’t; “No no no,” he said, “Carol Ann would kill me.” That was true, of course—I had meant for him to give her a ride to the Tavern. I couldn’t take her anywhere. She was very pushy, butting into other people’s conversations and assuming they were enjoying her gibberish—she was almost professional in that way. You might have thought she had done this kind of work before. She was a little bit like a cop.

Later, she described to the cops how she knew we were dope fiends because we were all asking her, “Are you sure you’re not a cop?” I didn’t really
think
she was a cop . . . that is how stupid I was. I thought she was just one more dingbat, one more groupie who was unusually determined.