The Princess Diarist(23)

I also doubt much of this was actually said per se, but I know he lay on his back on the couch in Riggs’s apartment telling me the story. And if he did say any of it, I’m sure he made it up.

Though there has been some speculation regarding my drug use during Star Wars, I used nothing other than Harrison’s pot on the weekends during that first film. After that, marijuana was no longer possible for me—it had such a powerful, all-consuming effect on me that I have never used that drug again.

In effect, I can’t remember now what I was too uncomfortable to remember at the time. For three months. From celebration to intoxication to assignation to infatuation to imitation to indignation—this was my trimester of the affair that was Carrison.

? ? ?

harrison finished shooting first. My last scenes would be two weeks later, so I decided to go back to L.A. for a break and wound up flying there with Harrison. I wasn’t in charge of the movie’s travel arrangements, so I couldn’t have organized things so that he and I sat together, but sit together we did, for a full fourteen hours. In coach.

I don’t know if he was pleased with these arrangements, because he didn’t exhibit emotions and I didn’t record it in the journals I kept, but we did wind up talking. Anyway, whatever I don’t remember of our conversation on the flight, I do remember that he was kind. Kind enough to enable me to close the door on our cinematic episode together, both on-and offscreen, without regret. Which was quite a turn of events when you consider all those silent weekends.

“I’m a hick,” I recall saying to him.

“No,” Harrison answered. “You think you’re less than you are. You’re a smart hick.” And then, “You have the eyes of a doe and the balls of a samurai.”

It’s the only thing he ever said to me that acknowledged any intimacy between us, and it was enough. Not only because it had to be, but because of what I’m assuming it cost him to go that out of character in conversation. We never again acknowledged that anything of that nature had occurred.

? ? ?

anyway, I keep mentioning these diaries. The ones I kept during the filming of the first Star Wars, the diaries I had forgotten about but recently found. By now, you’re all ears. Or eyes. Time for the reveal.





notes from his periphery, or the glib martyr





One could never call me a quitter



I take something right and see it



Through till it’s wrong



Auctioning myself off to the lowest bidder



Going once, going twice



Gone



Sold to the man for the price of disdain



Some are sold for a song



I don’t rate a refrain.



I guess it was all going just a little too well



If I wasn’t careful I’d be happy pretty soon



Heaven’s no place for one who thrives on hell,



One who prefers the bit to the silver spoon.



Then just when I’d almost resigned myself to winning



When it seemed my bright future would never dim



When my luck looked as though it was only beginning



I met him.



. . .



Sullen and scornful; a real Marlboro man



The type who pours out the beer and eats the can



A tall guy with a cultivated leer



One you can count on to disapprove or disappear



I knew right away that he was a find



He knew that you had to be cruel to be kind



Given this, he was the kindest man I’d ever met



Back came my sense of worthlessness



And my long lost pangs of regret



I was my old self again, lost and confused



Reunited with that old feeling



Of being misunderstood and misused.



Sold to the man for the price of disdain



All of this would be interesting



If it weren’t so mundane.





He is like a fantasy. The inevitability of his escape is most likely his most attractive feature. He submits to the silences without a struggle; I go under shrugging and sighing, finally overcome by the sheer weight of the pause-turned-lull-turned-way-of-life. Silence speaks louder than words—it screams, “BORING!” He’s boring and tries to make it look more like a decision than an accident. The silences make my composure decompose from the inside out.

I wonder what he is like inside out. We often assume that when the surface offers so little the depth must be unfathomable. Whatever is inaccessible must be worthwhile. I hate him and all of his quiet. But I love the implied disapproval, the seniority, the sternness, the disdain, the “strong silent type.”

Frightening awful silences. Hiding behind all those mannerisms and quiet, crouched down behind himself. Unfiltered cigarettes, beer, broads and lumberjack shirts. And all that quiet to read into. One not only has to read between the lines, one has to fill him in altogether. Because he’s not there. To make him important in one’s life requires an overactive imagination. Unfortunately, mine never knows when to quit.