High life
Generation game
Taki
HNew York
is other talents aside, the great Talleyrand was known for having seduced three generations of the Duchesse of Dino, granny first, then her daughter, finally granny's granddaughter. I only know of one other, an American, who has managed this feat, but I'm certainly not going to name him as he's a gent and quite elderly.
Although it may shock some of you, I find absolutely nothing wrong with seducing different gentrations. After all, what's good for a mother is surely good for the daughter, too. Needless to say, in the natural progression of things, a mother should precede a daughter, but sometimes the opposite happens. Well, actually, in my case it didn't happen, although the Kissinger, Santo-Domingo and de la Renta party for the Erteguns was by far the best bash I've been to in a hell of a long while, despite my lack of success with a lady called Pauline. But first a few words about the party.
They say a good mix, good music and young people make a party, but this one lacked the latter and was a far greater success as a result. The dance floor was packed throughout the evening because people my age know how to dance the samba and the rumba and the fox-trot and the meringue, and do not sit around on their arses staring at the ceiling as juventus tends to do. The music was to die for, the real thing, not those Zulu ululations we're used to hearing in sweaty nightclubs. Mind you, if one fails under such perfect conditions, one should hang up one's jock, which I'm seriously thinking of doing.
Alas, Pauline said thanks but no thanks, despite tripping the light fantastic on the dance floor. In order to gain her confidence I told her I was a cross-dresser and gay, but I never got to first base. Having stepped out with her daughter for a while in the past may have put her off, but I doubt it. Oh well, you know how these upper-class Americans are, puritanical and all that. Perhaps I should stick to Europeans. From past experience, mothers almost never mind when I go after their daughters, and daughters certainly don't care if I chase their mothers.
Failing to seduce, of course, is a fate worse than death, especially for a Greek. As a child, while learning the myths, I was taught in no uncertain terms that Helen of Sparta, the greatest beauty ever, became Helen of Troy because she was abducted, not seduced by Paris. It was rubbish, of course. In the Iliad she is tenderly treated by Homer and there is a touching episode in Book Three where the old men of Troy agree that it was worth fighting a war to keep her in Troy. In the Odyssey she is reconciled with Menelaus and domesticated as a housewife. The first person who admitted that Helen had voluntary hanky-panky with Paris was my German nanny, who obviously had read Euripides. Old Euripides was as hostile to Helen as Aeschylus is in Agamemnon, blaming her for the disaster she caused. The Romans were just as bad. Virgil, Ovid and Seneca thought her morally weak, and Dante put her among the lust
ful in the swirling storm of his Second Circle.
Being seduced, in other words, was considered not cricket by the Ancients, but I suppose only because Helen was married, something Pauline is not. (She's a widow.) Zeus, however, was allowed free rein to seduce to his heart's content. Accounts of his quarrels with the jealous Hera, who was his wife and also his sister (both being children of Kronos), were legendary. Zeus seduced everyone, and if occasionally rebuffed a la Taki, he would turn himself into Ganymede — the male equivalent of Helen of Troy in looks — and then score freely. Hera got so pissed off with Ganymede, she abducted him to Olympus and turned him into a butler serving the gods. Poor Ganymede. Not only didn't he do anything wrong, someone else got laid by impersonating him.
Ironically, I tried this once myself. I spotted this beautiful girl in a nightclub while talking to a friend of mine who is as goodlooking a man as I've seen. I asked him to go and chat her up and tell her his name was Taki. 'What do you hope to gain by this?' he asked. 'Just get her telephone number and I'll do the rest,' I told him.
My plan was simple. After a while, over the telephone or in a letter, I would admit to her my deception, declare undying love and ask her to meet the real Taki. The plan didn't work. As soon as my friend said his name was Taki she said, 'No it isn't, you're Julio Mario, and you are 30 years younger than Taki.'
Now to find somebody Pauline doesn't know, preferably a modern Ganymede.
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