High life
Palimony
Taki
New York I keep having a recurring nightmare ever since the palimony case began in Los Angeles. In case anyone in England is not familiar with what I am talking about, Palimony means the screwing you get for the screwing you got if you were living with a girl and did not end up married to her. I keep dreaming that the various girls I have occasionally managed to attract are lolling on a sandy beach, soaking up the sun, While I, poor slob, toil all day and night to support them in the style to which they became accustomed during that brief moment known around the watering holes of the West as the Taki Twenty-second Workout. It is enough to keep anyone from Sleeping, even people like me who don't have to toil all day and night because Papa did that for me, thank you very much. It nevertheless bothers me and I wonder how Jeff Bernard is getting on, knowing that his papa did not take care of him as well as mine did. And I am not the only one. Everybody here in the United States is in a state of apprehension and fear, and loathing for Michele Marvin and her money-grabbing lawyer, Marvin Mitchelson.
Picture it: an unmarriage ceremony. One meets a girl, offers her a drink, the de rigueur sniff and then back to her or his apartment. But before anything can take place, the couple, flanked suddenly by lawyers, are read out loud the clauses and waivers that express their sentiments. By the time the lawyers finish there is nothing left to do but go home on one's own.
Such are the aftershocks of the Lee Marvin case, a lot of people are settling out of court despite the fact they have not even been sued yet. Some girls, in fact, have received a windfall which was totally unexpected as they hadn't the foggiest that they'd been to bed with the man presently dispensing his largesse upon them. But such is life here in America. Money is God and everything is measured with money. Including sex prowess and love. Thus a good lover is responsible because the girl might end up with a bad lover after the good one dropped her. There is even such a case history. The lady said she had to be compensated because she had got used to good lovemaking, and she was not enjoying it any longer. The judge forced the good lover to pay. As he was a drunkard and broke he didn't have to hand over a lot, but still, it scared every good lover in the land.
Last week, however, some silver appeared in the cloudy lining. The Supreme Court, agreeing that 'no longer is the female destined solely for the home and the rearing of the family', ruled by a majority of six to three that state laws exempting women from paying alimony are unconstitutional because they discriminate against men on the basis of sex. When I read the news I could not believe it. I felt as surprised (and pleased) as the Ayatollah when he woke up one morning and realised that all the nonsense he was spouting had been taken literally, and everyone had run away. Now I am busy making up a list of ladies who I am going to sue very soon: women who kept me in nightclubs and opium dens for the best years of my life; girls who never corrected my dangling participles or run-on sentences. Because if it wasn't for them I could have been a good writer, instead of a high life expert. I could be interviewing Callaghan or David Owen instead of running around with the Princess Margaret set.
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