The Happy Hooker: My Own Story

3. SOUTH AFRICA

The flight from Amsterdam to Johannesburg promised to be very long but not necessarily dull. I was seated alongside an attractive Italian businessman with a divine sense of humor and a cultured manner. During dinner, served immediately after takeoff, we enjoyed a spirited conversation, discovering we shared a mutual interest in classical music, among other things.

He was such a charming person that, by the time the stewardess removed our trays, I already wanted to go down on him. A lot of acrobatic skill was required to accomplish this feat without being observed. The way we finally did it was to cover me to the tip of my head with a light blanket while I pretended to be getting my vanity bag from under his window seat. Doing it got us so turned on that we wanted to make love all the way. But first, we had to be patient until the girls handed out blankets and pillows, dimmed the cabin lights, and everyone was settled down.

As soon as the coast was clear we removed the arm-rests from the seats, squeezed down together under the blanket, he facing my back spoon-fashion, and proceeded to make love. We had to be very quiet, and, we soon discovered, very careful, because a couple of times he became overamorous and I almost fell down between the seats.

We made a game of doing it between the stewardesses walking up the aisle to answer call lights and the passengers walking sleepily to the lavatory. The challenge of making love 30,000 feet in the air made it even more exciting.

It was rather like herrings in a can, to tell you the truth, and very uncomfortable, but, even so, by the time we flew into daybreak we had managed to make love three times. As breakfast was served, we got up, stiff and sticky, and finally stretched our cramped legs.

The rest of the trip I spent sprucing up to meet my stepsister and her husband, Jan, whom I had seen only once before, and that was when Mona had traced my father down in Amsterdam while she was there from South Africa on her honeymoon.

Like me, Mona was born in Indonesia, but her mother, formerly a beautiful Russian ballerina, took her away from there after the divorce, and she and my father completely lost much.

At the time I met them I remember thinking what a lovely person she was and how handsome was her husband. Even as a fourteen-year-old virgin I had the tingling desire to make love to him someday. Jan was a mining engineer of French Huguenot descent, tall, well built, with dark curly hair. He was a true Afrikaner, stubbornly assertive and proud of his masculinity.

Both of them were at Johannesburg airport to meet me, and it was a happy reunion with lots of hugging, kissing, and laughing. Mona was just as dear as I remembered, and Jan was even more handsome.

Also there to meet me was a girl named Deenie, whom I had never met before but had corresponded with through a lesbian friend in Amsterdam. She recognized me from a photo I had sent, and she walked straight over and introduced herself to me and my relatives.

Deenie worked for KLM, the Dutch airline, and we exchanged telephone numbers, agreed to meet when I was settled in, and Mona, Jan, and I set out for my new home.

After a half-hour drive we arrived at a magnificent two-story white house in an exclusive outer suburb of Johannesburg. The building was set in sprawling lawns which made a vast playground for my niece, eight, and two nephews, seven and six, and two huge dogs, a Great Dane and a German shepherd.

To one side was a luxurious swimming pool, the other a three-car garage, and in back was a chicken farm, Mona’s pet project, which she ran with the aid of some of their servants.

Life was easy in the gorgeous South African sunshine, and the family treated me like royalty. I was not allowed to lift a finger around the house, and the days were spent lazing by the pool, working on my suntan.

But the nights were often empty. There is no television in South Africa because of what people say is a deliberate government policy to contain apartheid, so if they didn’t invite a neighbor couple over for dinner, there was little else to do. During the first couple of weeks I would sit in the living room, listening to classical records, being baby-sitter, while my sister and her husband attended some formal dinner or other function. The eerie silence would be punctuated only by the shrill chirp of crickets or an occasional bird, and the only stirring would be when the wind caught the diaphanous curtains.

At these times, the realization I was the only adult in this big lonely house would make me feel melancholy and homesick, and to kill time I wrote long, long letters to my family and friends.

I was also acutely feeling the absence of a strong male body to caress me and, to put it bluntly, satisfy my sexual cravings. In Amsterdam I was used to regular sex at least once a week and twice on weekends, with my steady boyfriend and all of a sudden I was deprived.

The urge to have a lover was really getting to me – forget about masturbation, since that was something I rarely ever did – but there didn’t seem to be any unattached males around except for the servants, whom I wouldn’t consider quite apart from the fact there is a penalty of nine months’ imprisonment in South Africa for crossing that kind of a color line.

Now, this is bizarre, and I know it’s bizarre, but it did happen, and I’d be a moral fraud to completely ignore it.

One day as I was lying by the pool thinking I would go ape out of horniness. I became aware of the big German shepherd lying restless by my side. This dog had embarrassed me the first five days after my arrival by following me everywhere and sniffing at my legs. He apparently had a nose for sex so at this point, where I could no longer be choosy, I decided that – bizarre or not – my first South African lover would have to be him.

I reached down languidly and started stroking the hair-covered mound between his hind legs. He became aroused at once, standing up and fixing me with a long, loving stare.

It was obvious if there was going to be a hot love scene between me and my canine companion, it would have to be conducted at a more discreet location, away from the prying eyes of the servants.

So we crept into my brother-in-law’s study, and I locked the door behind us, and while this may disgust some, it seemed, well, perfectly unnatural – yes, not a little kinky and crazy – at the time. I mean, I was that horny.

I rolled down the bottom half of my bikini, put his nose against me to give him the scent, and started massaging his penis, which came out of the skin, all red and glistening, and the sight really turned me on.

As he stood there on all fours I climbed across his back facing away from him, with my clitoris pressed against where the curve of his tail meets his body, and started moving back and forth. At the same time I was handling the animal’s penis.

He was a young, strong animal and was breathing wildly. His tongue was leaping out of his mouth, and his eyes were looking at me with an old, but somehow familiar, give-it-to-me doggie expression. Within minutes I climaxed twice, and my bikini was soaking wet.

However, the poor dog hadn’t yet got his rocks off, so I stepped off his back and continued playing with him. I was very curious to see what would happen, from a purely clinical point of view, so I knelt close to his body, where I could get a better look. I stroked only a little while longer, and suddenly the sperm spilled into my hand like warm water: he gave me an apologetic look, conked out, and went straight to sleep.

Not the most touching love scene, but at least all parties to the action were happy, temporarily.

A couple of days after the dog episode I was left in charge of the children while their parents went to a morning wedding. I occupied them with games, and then we all took a swim in the pool.

Jonathan, the seven-year-old, seemed to have a prematurely developed sexual instinct, and climbed with his legs around me, somehow undid my bra, and started feeling my breast. As he hung there in the water with his lilliputian legs around me, I felt his baby penis becoming slightly hard. I had no intention of letting it go any further, so I calmed him down, dried him off, and we all went in to have lunch.

Since this was hardly a very satisfactory kind of love life, I started thinking seriously about finding a place of my own where I could conduct my private activities in a more mature, conventional manner. I also wanted to start looking for a job, because I was not accustomed to total idleness.

But Mona didn’t want me to leave. She loved having a sister around, because, for the first time in her adult life, here was someone to whom she could confide her intimate secrets.

Although I never met Mona’s mother, the woman must have been as much like her daughter as I was like my father. As wild and as extroverted as I was, she was shy and introverted.

Mona was a warm, spontaneous person, but strictly raised, and almost on the prudish side. I was amused at the way she wore flannel pajamas that concealed her body from the neck down, even in the hot South African climate, in case one of her children should wander in and really check out her body.

How different it was from my liberal upbringing when seeing my father with a hard-on was almost as natural as seeing my mother with a hat on.

With the need for mature, conventional sex now critical in my mind, I found myself at home alone one day with my brother-in-law.

I was lying face down beside the pool with my bikini bra undone to catch the sun all over my back, and he was sitting in a chair beside me, dressed in his pants but naked from the waist up. I suddenly knew I was going to make love with him.

To break the ice I started brushing the little ants off his feet and told him there were also a couple crawling on his back. I started brushing them away while my movements became slow strokes and gradually little scratches.

By this time he was aware of my intentions and felt compelled to blurt out an unexpected admission.

“Xaviera, in my eleven years of marriage to your sister I have never looked at another woman, and I don’t think I should start now.” He stammered with the air of someone telling you something which was a source of both pride and pain. “Especially with a member of the family.”

This was the stolid Afrikaner mentality. Here was a handsome, rugged, but uptight and conservative man.

Far from dampening my ardor, his admission only made me more determined to seduce him, because I felt that it would really be an accomplishment to make someone commit adultery who had never done it before.

I began really putting in some work on him. I started stroking his torso from his back to his front, scratching him lightly with my nails, kneading the inside of his thighs, and anything else I could do without the servants seeing what was going on.

Slowly he got turned on against his wishes. He was a man, after all, and a strongly built one, and basic instincts are – well – basic.

Jan was a torn man. Torn between the desire to remain faithful, yet already halfway lured into infidelity.

“Let’s just go in and get a cool drink from the refrigerator, anyway,” I coaxed him, and once inside led him up to my bedroom.

I was already sitting on the side of the bed with my bra off when he started to have second thoughts. Bravo. Virtue was triumphing over pleasure. “This is all wrong,” Jan said. “I want to leave.” As he was talking I undid his pants and was reaching inside his fly.

“Xaviera, please get ahold of yourself,” he said. But by then I already had ahold of him, and I started eating him.

He wasn’t too huge, but he grew to twice his size in my mouth, and I could tell he was loving every bit of it. His hands started going faster and faster through my hair, and he quickly climaxed.

We rested five minutes, then I pulled off the lower part of my bikini and removed his trousers, and we made love fast and passionately. I almost ripped him to pieces.

I was so horny at the excitement of having a man and the idea of forbidden fruit that I had an orgasm after five or six strokes, and he climaxed again with me.

Two quick orgasms often happen for the first time with a man, but the third time I planned to make it really last. But then he became jittery again. “Mona might come back at any minute, and it would kill her if she found out,” he pleaded.

I managed to talk him out of leaving, and in about ten minutes he was recuperated, reassured, and ready to go again.

I wanted to teach Jan more than the one basic position he already knew, but at the same time I wanted to go easy on him. So I settled for a few simple variations. The first one was with him lying on his back and me sitting astride him with my back toward him; then we tried it doggie style; then with me lying face down on the bed while he stood behind me with my legs wrapped behind his thighs.

We also did it with my legs around his shoulders, then me lying on my right side and then on my left side, and he was like a kid at a carnival, so carried away that he climaxed again with a roar.

Altogether I had climaxed five times when we heard Mona’s car pulling into the driveway, and he had time to jump into his clothing and run down to the study and greet her from there, as if nothing had happened. Perhaps I should have felt guilty, but I was too relieved of sexual tension even to think about it.

From that day Jan and I made all kinds of excuses to get Mona and the kids out of the house. “Why don’t you go and play a game of tennis?” “Why don’t you take the kids for a drive? Don’t you have to deliver some chickens?” he would ask her. My virtuous brother-in-law was turning into an absolute sex maniac. I taught him another ten new positions and made it with him several more times, but then the gravity of what I was doing did start to get to me, and I began to feel guilty. I had needed sex, but I also cared for Jan and Mona.

“Listen,” I said to him one day, “why don’t you go and practice what I’ve taught you on my sister, too?”

He must have taken my advice, because a week later a new Mona with slightly dark circles under her eyes called me aside and confided in me.

“Xaviera,” she began awkwardly, “I think Jan has gone crazy or something; all of a sudden he has become sex hungry… And he wants to do it in all different kinds of positions; he even wants me to put my legs over his shoulders. I’ve never heard of such a thing!”

Of course, her husband’s “aberrations” all coincided with the positions I had taught him and, what’s more, she enlisted my aid in figuring out how he had learned them.

“We don’t have any sex books in the house, and he can’t be having an affair, because he never goes out, so I’m all confused.”

“Maybe he’s seen some stag films,” I said, which was a crazy suggestion, because the South African censorship laws are very strict, and so far as I knew, they had no such thing as blue movies. But I thought I had better offer some kind of suggestion.

My guilty conscience began to work by now. I really needed to make love, but just the same, I didn’t want to be calculating with my own sister.

Also I was afraid that if she kept mentioning it to me I somehow might start laughing and say, “Guess who taught him?”

Either way, it would be better for me, after being there for more than a month, to move out, so I announced that this time I really intended to settle down and get an apartment.

I first went into town and found a good job as an executive secretary with a large advertising agency, and then asked Deenie, the girl from the airport, to help me find an apartment.

She took me to several addresses, and the one I liked best was a spacious one-bedroom place in the Hillbrow section of Johannesburg, the young, swinging heart of the city.

Before I moved out of my sister’s house I called Jan aside and gave him a little talk. “Listen,” I said, “all this new stuff I taught you is between Mona, you, and me. So please keep it in the family, and don’t go out practicing it elsewhere.”

The apartment would not be ready until the end of the month, three days away, so Deenie asked me to stay over with her. Her place was smaller than the one I was getting, and it had only one small bed.

The first night I moved in, Deenie surprisingly made no attempt to have an intimacy with me. The second night was curiously the same. By the third night I couldn’t stand the sexual tension any longer. “Listen, Deenie,” I begged, “please let me make love to you.”

That night we had a fantastic time. She was beautiful and exciting and responded to my advances.

For the next two months we had a little affair, but conflict built up again, as in my first lesbian relationship with Liesbeth in Amsterdam. I was more of a butch and liked to please women rather than be pleased. That’s why I often give them satisfaction and don’t get it myself. Mentally yes, but physically no – for that I need a man.

And that was something else that was missing in a lesbian relationship. Something they can have no way – the real thing, cock. Forget about artificial devices and dildos. I happen to like to fuck, and that is one thing women cannot do with each other, at least not all the way. Emotionally, however, a love affair between two women is sometimes the most beautiful thing on earth, because they have more in common than men and women and more understanding of each other’s desires.

It didn’t take long before I was roaming around looking for male action, and I must say Deenie proved to be very tolerant of me when I did. At times she would come with me after work to a British-style pub called Dawson’s where ad men, travel agents, and bankers hung out, and often she picked up a little male something for herself, too. But basically she was a butch lesbian who specialized, as it were, in seducing older women with turbulent marriages – types who usually treated Deenie very generously and gave her many beautiful presents.

Eventually Deenie and I completely severed our sexual relationship, and I launched myself on a one-woman sex spree that at one time or other must have included every one of the habitués of Dawson’s pub.

I attribute my nymphomaniacal behavior at the time to the general South African atmosphere. Like any colonial situation where you belong to an over-indulged white ruling minority, pampered by servants indentured from the indigenous majority, boredom and irresponsibility inevitably set in.

Apart from our high-salaried, low-taxed jobs, all other energies were channeled into pursuit of amusement.

The same boring drunks turned up at the same drunken parties, creating an increasingly incestuous circle, with everyone screwing everybody else’s wife or girl.

As a consequence of this kind of behavior, so-called standards quickly decline, and the mortality rate on marriages – and human life – increases. For instance, South Africa has one of the highest suicide rates per head of white population in the world.

The figure is also swelled by the number of homosexuals driven over the brink by job, housing, and social discrimination. The gay girls and boys are being chased all over Johannesburg. From one bar to the next, each time their new hangout is raided.

The narrow-minded government – the Afrikaans-speaking people, and not the more liberal-minded English – think any form of sex (almost even marital sex) is a sin.

In Jo’burg – or Jewburg, as it is often called because of the overwhelmingly high percentage of Jews who live there – the Afrikaners, old family descendants of the early Dutch colonists, seldom married out of their conservative and cliquey society. Nevertheless, these apparently stuffy men adored the European girls, freewheeling blond German, Dutch, or Nordic types. They preferred their broad-minded sexual approach, their warmth and spontaneity, and, being the most popular, these girls, myself included, screwed their way around town for free.

At the outset the men would take me to a nice dinner or to the theater, but that gradually dwindled to just bringing around a bottle of wine, and finally they would just drop by, get laid, and leave.

In no time I acquired quite a reputation in this ofttimes hypocritical crowd, and at parties they would sneeringly say, “There goes the flying Dutchman – flying from bed to bed.”

It was at this time that I got turned off by the mentality of men. They are basically selfish in their urges, insisting on the right to make love when and how they want it.

Once I tried to extricate myself from the whole rotten web, and they snickered, “What’s the matter, has the little nymphomaniac got a disease?”

I did not especially want to be promiscuous, and would have loved a steady boyfriend to share things with and take care of me, but somehow I never met one, and toward the end of this period I was really fed up and depressed by men in general.

My best friends became the male homosexual crowd, who taught me how to cook and appreciate opera and ballet. The only red-blooded male I could confide in during that glum period was a little Jewish photographer named Aubrey. Ours was a platonic relationship, but at least I could depend on him to take me out in the evenings, knowing there was nothing ulterior about his intentions. And it was a barbecue party Aubrey took me to on a November night in 1966 where I met the man I was to become engaged to.

The occasion far the party was Guy Fawkes Day, when the British observe the anniversary of the day a man by that name attempted to blow up their houses of Parliament. It is traditionally celebrated with fireworks, and that is exactly what exploded when I met our host.

Carl Gordon was a twenty-eight-year-old American economist, recently arrived in Johannesburg on a tour of duty for his New York-based management-consultant firm, and he was every woman’s idea of the perfect catch.

Carl was beautiful to look at, built like an Adonis, and stylishly dressed in custom-made clothes. He was very virile-looking. On top of all that, he lived alone in a fabulous mansion of a house with twin tennis courts and an Olympic-size swimming pool.

“Aubrey” – I nudged my escort – “Carl is the most divine man I have ever seen; how can I get to know him?”

Aubrey was pessimistic. “Don’t waste your time, his Greek girl friend, Elly, sticks to him like glue.”

How right he was. From seven P.M. when the party started until it was about to break up, she watched him like a hawk, and it was only a wicked plot hatched by Aubrey and me – to spike her Irish coffees with triple shots of whiskey – that made her fade from the picture.

Carl, I could sense, was also interested in me, but he barely had time to take down my telephone number and make a tentative date for Sunday, before it was time for everyone to go home.

The rest of the week dragged by. I would sit at my desk during the day or lie in bed at night fantasizing about what a beautiful romance we would have. Sunday could not come fast enough.

The day finally dawned, and I was jolted from my sleep at eight o’clock to answer the jangling phone. But it wasn’t Carl. It was Jurgen, a German pilot I had promised weeks before to go horseback-riding with that day. There was no wriggling out of it, and even though I loved going to bed with this man, my thoughts were elsewhere that day.

Around five P.M. I insisted he take me home, and just as I inserted my key in my front door, the telephone rang. This time it was Carl.

At six P.M. he arrived at my house, preceded through the door by a huge bunch of yellow roses with a cute little poem attached saying he had been calling all day and was dying to see me.

That evening I found out Carl was just as I had fantasized him. Intelligent, world-traveled, courteous, and considerate. How utterly different from the uncouth run-of-the-mill local male.

Our first date was dinner and dancing at Johannesburg’s most fashionable restaurant, and I was so turned on when he held me against his strong chest that my nipples were in constant erection throughout the night. That is as far as it went though, because I had just started menstruating, and in those days I didn’t know how to cope with the situation and would have been acutely embarrassed if he had suggested going to bed.

However, Carl was understanding and didn’t push me, and remained as patient as any man could be as we wined and dined together for the next five nights.

By the sixth evening when both of us were almost clawing the walls, it happened, and it was – as the kids say – like, wow!

Sometimes, when you really dig somebody and for some reason have to resist making love, the beautiful torment of restraint can make the act fantastic when it finally happens.

And it was not that Carl was a very skillful lover. In fact, he was rather clumsy and came one-two-three. But so did I, because I was so overcome with passion and the desire to have him inside me that I didn’t last any longer than he did at first.

Later on I would teach him how to make love properly, just as I have done with almost all of my men – as long as they had the potentials, which include a good body and a strong penis.

And Carl was really shaped huge. Even to this day I have seen only two other men endowed like him. However, generous sexual endowments don’t specifically make a man a good lover, but it helps as long as he uses it gently and doesn’t crudely bang away, because that can certainly hurt the woman.

With Carl that first night I was lucky I was so turned on and therefore lubricated; otherwise I probably would not have been able to accommodate all of him.

Gradually we became used to each other and each other’s bodies, and as our romance progressed, I let it be known to all the old crowd that I was no longer in circulation. “Don’t drop by anymore, or call me up,” I told them all; “I’ve met my man, and I am in love now.”

As might be expected, they made a lot of crude remarks, which I chose to ignore, but eventually they at least got the message and kept away. It would have been more convenient for us both had I moved in with Carl, but we wanted our love affair to get off on the right footing. My mother used to caution me about that.

“Xaviera, I can’t blame you if you don’t manage to keep your virginity until you are married in these modern times, but try never to live with a man,” she said. “You’ll give away the best years of your life if you let him have his cake and eat it too and get nothing in return, because a man never marries a woman who allows him to live with her.”

Her sentiments seemed quaint at the time, but I was to recall them as being not so old-fashioned, after all.

We moved in a respectable circle of businessmen and their wives, and our affair was indeed on a discreet basis. We respected each other tremendously, and I was very glad he never got to know about my nymphomaniacal background. The chances were he never would. Within five weeks of our first meeting Carl was to be transferred to the Oceanside city of Durban, eight hours’ drive away.

In the meantime, after a few idyllic weeks I was dying to hear from him the words “I love you.” It may sound somehow infantile, but when you’re in love these three words really mean something, emotionally.

The time went all too fast, and suddenly it was Carl’s last weekend in Johannesburg. We decided to spend it in the romantic resort hotel just outside the city called Kyalamy Ranch.

It rained most of the weekend, but it made our togetherness more intense. Some of the most beautiful moments lovers can spend in bed are when the rain is splashing on the roof and beating against the windows. It was this way, just before dinner on Sunday night, that Carl declared his feelings.

“Xaviera,” he started, cradling me in his arms, “I haven’t told you how I felt before this because I wanted to be sure myself. I am not like some kid who makes rash statements to every woman he meets so he can get her into bed.

“The truth is that I love you.”

I thought I would sail through the ceiling. I was like a teen-ager; I never felt those emotions before. Everything I ever wanted in my life was wrapped up in that moment in the cottage. For me this was the beginning of my life.

Then Carl went on, “And I would like to ask you whether you would consider becoming my wife.”

Would I? If it had been up to me, I would have married him that day. That minute. But his idea was to spend more time together and get married, after I came to the States and met his family.

In order that we would get to know each other better, Carl suggested I join him in Durban, where he was to stay for another two months, and just as soon as I could get free of my job and sublet my apartment, that’s just what I did.

A few days before Christmas I joined Carl in Durban and moved into his airy apartment that we never did bother to furnish because we wouldn’t be staying there very long. We never even had a gas stove, so we had all our meals in the best local restaurants.

Durban is a picturesque city with magnificent surfing beaches that are regarded as among the best in the world. I used to love going to them and watching the young, strong boys with their sun-bleached hair carrying wooden surfboards under their arms. Dotted along the beaches were colorful kiosks belonging to the Indians selling hot dogs, pastries, and ice creams. Gypsy women would wander up and down selling their merchandise as well, which was usually dresses, sandals, or flowers.

The weather was hot and humid, and the strong sun streaming through the curtainless windows would wake us up, bathed in sweat, very early in the mornings. But it didn’t bother us – we would make passionate love, then run across the road and jump into the ocean.

After Carl left for work each day I would shop for fruits and go back to the beach, where he would join me before lunch for a swim. He had been an Olympic swimmer, and I adored watching his powerful body plowing through the huge waves. Afterward we would stroll along the beach, and I believe people would consider us a happy, good-looking couple. Carl with his perpetual suntan and dark curly hair and me a streaked blond.

Nighttimes, after we had dined at the most expensive places we would always come home and make love again. We were already becoming slaves to each other’s bodies. Carl was a very strong man and could climax five times in two hours.

Time was floating deliciously by. No fights, no hassles, and I was sure this was ultimate happiness. I didn’t even look at another man. All I cared for was Carl, my lover, my life.

After leaving Durban, we spent a two-month vacation roaming footloose and fancy free all over the east part of Africa, and this glorious country must be among some of the most spectacular on the face of the earth.

We saw Kruger National Park, with it zebras, wildebeests, elephants, lions, beautiful deer, and I was almost molested by a rhinoceros.

The last stop on our photo safari was Mozambique, where the weather was so hot that even the swimming pool at the hotel was too warm to be refreshing. It was there that we parted company temporarily.

Carl set out for America, and I went back to South Africa to tie up loose ends and earn enough money to pay my fare to the U.S., with Carl, the American citizen, sponsoring my visa.

On the way back to the States, Carl made a detour through Amsterdam especially to meet my parents and officially ask for my hand in marriage. My father had already been smitten by a massive stroke that had left him paralyzed and without the power of speech, but my mother was very impressed by Carl’s gallant behavior and was so proud I had chosen such a fine man.

For the next six months we exchanged letters of such sizzling passion that I am surprised the pages didn’t ignite. And, two months before I was to leave for America, I returned to Holland to spend the last of my single days with my family.

I was to leave for America in August, but a week before departure I got a long-distance call from Carl in Jamaica asking me could I possibly delay my trip.

“Something has developed that necessitates my staying here,” he faltered. And even on the blurry transatlantic wire I suspected from his tone that the development was not exactly office business.

That night I sat down and wrote him a long letter telling him what I feared, and asking him to let me know if he had met another woman. “I’m not so narrow-minded I would expect a virile man like you to lead a monastic life, but don’t fall in love with someone else,” I implored.

Carl’s long, loving reply to that letter was reassuring.

“I promise you, Xaviera, you are the only woman I want in my life, and I am looking forward to being with you for the rest of our lives from next December to forever.”