How do you describe someone you really admired and loved?
And yet, he has so many aggravating traits? He was an instinctive conman. It was impossible to know when to believe him or disbelieve him. Everything he said or did was for effect. That is why he was so difficult to interview. He would deliberately say the opposite of what he knew you wanted to hear. He could be kind, gracious and gentile with a wonderful sense of humor. But he could also be vindictive and mean. All one could do with John Ford is accept him with all of his virtues and faults, and love him.
Maureen O'Hara on John Ford
When a man's partner is killed, he's supposed to do something about it. It doesn't make any difference what you thought of him. He was your partner and you're supposed to do something about it. And it happens we're in the detective business. Well, when one of your organization gets killed, it's-it's bad business to let the killer get away with it, bad all around, bad for every detective everywhere. THE MALTESE FALCON
Patti told the limo driver to pick her up the next day at 10 am and we stepped out of the limo. I lived at 1939 North Lincoln, when Lincoln Park was all Mexican. The whites wouldn't move in until Old Town was filled up. On Friday and Saturday nights the lobby was filled with mariachi bands waiting for their ride to work. Playing LA CUCARACHA for people who had no idea the song was about pot smoking. Marijuana por fumar indeed!
I was paying $400 a month, with a balcony overlooking Lincoln Avenue. In one direction from me was a damn good pizza joint, the opposite direction was the Park West. Not to mention a cool fondue restaurant. And the last days of the Playboy Club.
Patti and I took the elevator up to my pad and as soon as we got in she started kissing me. Now, because I had learned to make love during the free love era, I had long ago learned to hold back sometimes 30%, sometimes more of my sexual capability. It scared most women. As we kissed I realized she was matching me, going toe to toe. I decided to go full tilt boogie. She did not hesitate to match me. Holy shit!
Sex is a lot like music. When musicians get together to jam they create rhythms and solos and bridges. Same with sex. And I was jamming with the best.
She had a mirror with lines of coke on it and would periodically lean over to snort a line. Funny thing about coke. It makes women even more insatiable, but makes men lose control.
I like being in control of my instrument.
So I didn't do any but damn was I enjoying her ever growing wildness as she did a line.
Besides, from Newsweek to Sports Illustrated to Time, we were all being told it was "like pot".
A pity about the facts.
Bam I rose up and the sweat dripped down my face and dropped onto her skin and I kissed her with my eyes closed and I was fucking and she was squeezing and I opened my eyes and I was by the bridge in Piedmont Park and could hear the Allman Brothers jamming with the Grateful Dead and I was fucking Mona hey, hey Mona
and I'd been at that bridge a hundred times but damn Mona knew what to do it was Charlie Parker meets Milt Jackson and John Coltrane it wasn't fucking anymore it was a jam session and then I asked Patti-
When do you want me to come
and she climbed on top and said I'll say when and off we went again.
I can't tell you when the song ended but even after all that coke she collapsed in my arms.
Goodnight.
Morning came with automatic wood and we went at it again. I guess she wanted to know if what had happened was because of the coke or was it real.
So I made a pot of coffee and talked to her.
I told her how beautiful she was, I knew Skip Williamson at Playboy and she should meet him and maybe get a job. She said they didn't really hire strippers and I had no idea she was one and looked surprised.
"When I was 12, my mom drove me to a high-rise and told me the room to go to. And to do what I was told to do. That was my first john".
What the fuck? What did I just hear?
Her mom was her pimp.
I held her as she started to cry, and promised her I wasn't lying. We would go to Playboy and I really believed she could work for their modeling agency, and get in the mag. She looked at me like she had heard it all before, but not from someone who decided when he would come.
She said she wanted to do it, and stop stripping. And everything else.
"Ok Mike. I'll call you. But I have to ask you. Have you ever heard of a guy named Del Close?', she said as I nodded, no.