Nowadays, finding a small crime article in a newspaper that I can fashion into a novel, as I did in 1978, is rare if not nearly impossible. Some secondary information in  one obscure article became an integrate part of The Guitar Player & The Lady Killer.  The article was in the Chicago Tribune. It was nothing spectacular, the kind of article that’s strewn about newspapers. It was at the top corner of a page, drawing my eye. The story was about a thief, but the very first sentence included the name of a former lover. Involved in a murder trial.   

     I read the entire article. At the end, more information was provided about the murder trial. I knew the thief in the article must have been lying. The DeLuca I knew would NEVER had gotten caught by talking to someone in jail. Still, I feared the truth. Months later, I found some newspaper articles about the murder, in a library, on microfiche. Yes, the man in handcuffs did kinda look like the man I had known. I couldn’t be certain. The description of his ‘matinee idol looks’ fit the man I had kissed. I had taken that six week affair and fashioned it into my thesis for a Masters of Fine Arts: the story of a small-time Mafia hit-man and his affair with a college woman. My Frank DeLuca had accused me of slumming when he asked me to be his woman. I, finally weighing reality in all its aspects, said, “No.”       

     That six-week affair was the most intense sexual period of my life. Another reason it was memorable was because when I went to the bar where we had first met, and where he was then tending, I tried to convince him, that “No” didn’t have to mean no to everything. (The sex had been that great.) He took my right hand in his, opened my palm then kissed it and said, “That’s the way the cookie crumbles.”      

     To end a sexual masterpiece with a cliché broke my heart.     

     I finished the Tribune article, letting the newspaper fall from my hand. It was him? It wasn’t him? Maybe yes? Maybe no? Who knows? Inner demons, or maybe simply curiosity, motivated me to find his mailing address. I wrote him. I moved from Chicago and continued to write him from Los Angeles. In both cities I had been a temporary legal secretary and for fun, would occasionally use whatever office stationary lying about for personal letters.

     The Frank DeLuca in jail for 300 years told me the prison guards were mad at him. By law they were not allowed to open anything coming from a lawyer’s office.  One time, to be silly, I wrote a long letter on the back of a Farrah Fawcett poster, a swimsuit, near-naked picture that I thought a man in jail would appreciate.

He told me the guards were mad again. A poster, with a letter on the back, could not be confiscated. Eventually, I told him I thought he did it – killed the people. But what I needed to know, was he the same Frank DeLuca who had been my lover? He denied the murder and he denied knowing me, but the DeLuca I knew would deny that too.

I had read one of the most profound miseries of being in prison is the lack of visual stimulation. I subscribed him to GEO magazine. He was grateful and told me I needn’t do things like that.

Eventually, I stopped writing him. I feared that if he were released from jail, he might come looking for me. That was not something I wanted. Ever. I later burned all his letters.

I had written The 13^th Vampire Mission that died without publication. Then I wrote Virgins! A Memoir of the Sexual Revolution which found a NYC agent. It failed to sell. In 1984, I went overseas and began The Guitar Player & The Lady Killer. The Frank DeLuca I knew, and the Frank DeLuca in prison for 300 years – I merged into the one Lady Killer just as I consolidated two guitar players I had loved into one Guitar Player.

Recently, I was watching the movie The Reader I had read the book earlier and been profoundly moved by perceiving the story as an allegory: the woman was Germany, and the young boy was the German people – raped by war. Then Ralph Fiennes was reading books aloud, tape-recording them as a gift for his former illiterate lover now in jail. My heart stopped. I clutched my throat. ‘That couldov been me!’ I thought. Me, enthralled still with the most agonizing, alive, intense, intimate, life-and-death, good and evil, passionate sexual liaison of my life.     

Loving Frank DeLuca made me question what the world and religion said was good and what was evil.  The sex was so great, how could it, or us together, be evil? I warred with the DeLuca I knew in bed, warred for his soul, for his redemption, for his salvation. He had been a kid, enlisting in the Marines to escape the hell of foster homes. Nineteen missions. On point. Hand to hand kills his favorite. Then… he was shot in the head and left for dead in a Vietnam rice paddy. Allowed by God to live and meet me only to destroy my soul.

 

 

'...I think it (Virgins!)is a work of genius. It is so vivid, so palpably descriptive of a certain time in history and such a wonderful, frank exploration of female life and sexuality. You deserve world wide recognition.'

When a reader wrote me this a while ago, I was shocked. Yes, I did finish the book in 1982, nearly 30 years ago. Published it a year ago. But I haven't successfully marketed it. So, with the book being called 'a work of genius' I thought I should invest money. I signed up to have the book shown at seven library shows in the USA, including my homestate of Illinois, and one in London, UK. 

Let's see what will happen... 

I told myself I'd begin writing a book, The Expats (working title) this September. However, I've nearly finished publishing Travel-Ready Packing: Pack Light, Dress Right - Any Time, Any Where (http://travelreadypacking.com) by Julie Martin. So I was editing The Guitar Player & The Lady Killer and realized that way too much of the book was still in my head and not on the paper.  So I have to do a major re-write on GP & LK again.

GP & LK was written from 1984 to 1989. Virgins! was written from 1978-1983.

Virgins! is my third book. First was The Chicagoans, my MFA thesis, which I rewrote-edited five times MORE after I received my MFA. Why? I wanted it to be good, and without the time pressures, I was able to rewrite it well. It was a bit less than 200 manuscript pages. Then I wrote another book, but sadly, I used beer to motivate myself to write, and another beer to keep me writing and HALF of that book was on the page and half still in my head: The 13th Vampire Mission (good vampires vs. bad vampires war to save the Earth from invasion of evil UFOs). I started that in 1976 in San Francisco and finished it in 1979.

With Vampires ruined from drinking, I vowed not to repeat the same mistake with Virgins! This wasn't always easy when friends in L.A. offered me very good coke for free. Did it once, but the whole body hangover was so horrendous, I said no way when offered more coke other times. I also learned if I smoked my friends' excellent marihuna, I couldn't write a coheren't paragraph for three days. So I swore off all drugs and alcohol while finishing the book I had started three years earlier. (Actually, I had 95% given up drinking alcohol in 1978 when I was 28. I should have done that when 20). 

I'm delaying a five year commitment to another book. Which is foolish. Back in grad school, I once said. 'I'm only happy making love or writing, and when I'm not doing one, I'm doing the other.'

Since I'm not making love, and I'd like to be happy again, writing another book should work. Let's see.... 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1129978/How-faceless-amoral-world-cyberspace-created-deeply-disturbing--generation-SEX.html

 

How the faceless and amoral world of cyberspace has created a deeply disturbing... generation SEX

By Olivia Lichtenstein
Last updated at 8:47 PM on 28th January 2009

 

 This article is eloquent about the sexual world of young people today. Sadly, there aren't enough voices, enough teachers, enough mentors or good examples for young women to understand the exploitive nature of their sexuality.

 

 The male hierarchy has co-opted women's freedom. Using the media, men have waged a war of terror against women, convincing them that being free sexually (i.e. giving it away freely, with no ties, no commitments, no emotions, etc.) is for their own benefit. 

 I don't live in the States now. When I first heard of hip-hop/rapper music I was appalled at the anti-female 'holes' and other garbage talk. Finally, Ophrah Winfrey had a show that was a rare voice saying, 'STOP'. 

Parents who allow girls and boys under 16 to date one-to-one, IMHO, are responsible for the actions of their children. 

 Maybe financial realities will sober up adults and teenagers alike. One can only hope.

Even Linda Lovelace (Deep Throat) says that she had her female organs removed probably because of her sexual promiscuity – too many partners. Eva Peron (“Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina”) died from cancer. She had started her climb up the political ladder through prostitution. Now it’s been proven that a major cause of cervical cancer is promiscuity – too much foreign sperm.

Another research showed that mutual promiscuity can lead a female to reject (or be allergic to) a lover’s sperm when she hopes to become pregnant. The woman’s body simply says, “No!” to any sperm trying to fertilizer an egg.

More recent research seems to indicate that male promiscuity can lead to female cancer, i.e. when Kutcher (That 70s Show) stopped sleeping around for the love of one woman, Demi Moore (ex-wife Bruce Willis), he just may also become the stimulus for her getting cancer. 

Of course, most of these studies were done before condoms played a large part in ‘safe sex’ (As if sex can ever be ‘safe’.) So this article may just be scare tactics to discourage promiscuity, i.e. Do as I say, not as I did. 

Then again, the emotional toll of promiscuity, over the long run, is pretty damaging.