The Princess Diarist(31)

But whatever kind of time it was, it was running out. He was leaving Sunday. So there we were, Tuesday night sitting in the lurch that he would leave me in. Nothing personal, of course. He finished filming and had to go home to his wife and kids. Aye, there’s the rub. That’s when Cinderella’s pre-shattered post-ball shoe was scheduled to drop.





With him love was easier done than said Instead of taking you to heart he would take you to bed And you take what he has to offer lying down You’re getting more involved while he’s still getting around It’s all a matter of touch and go Cause he’s one for all and all for show But after all was said and almost done



I was playing for keeps and he was playing for fun





I call people sometimes hoping not only that they’ll verify the fact that I’m alive but that they’ll also, however indirectly, convince me that being alive is an appropriate state for me to be in. Because sometimes I don’t think it’s such a bright idea. Is it worth the trouble it takes trying to live life so that someday you get something worthwhile out of it, instead of it almost always taking worthwhile things out of you?





I wish I could go away somewhere but the only problem with that is that I’d have to go, too.





forty years on

How I’ve portrayed Harrison is how Harrison was with me forty years ago. I’ve gotten to know him a bit better over time, and as such somewhat differently. He’s an extremely witty man and someone who seems more comfortable with others than he is, or ever was, with me. Maybe I make him nervous. Maybe I talk so much he can’t get a word in edgewise. Maybe it’s our mutual gestalt. Maybe I exasperate him. Probably a bit of all four.

But perhaps the most important reason, maybe, just maybe, we didn’t speak much was because the subject of our relationship was off-limits. And that was the elephant herd in the room to tiptoe around. So we sat amongst the elephants and ignored them together. It was our biggest activity, the biggest thing that we shared other than Star Wars dialogue and the painfully obvious undiscussed.

My affair with Harrison was a very long one-night stand. I was relieved when it ended. I didn’t approve of myself.

If Harrison was unable to see that I had feelings for him (at least five, but sometimes as many as seven) then he wasn’t as smart as I thought he was—as I knew he was. So I loved him and he allowed it. That’s as close a reckoning as I can muster four decades later.

I’m frequently still awkward in his presence, still struggle with what I’m going to say. I always imagine that he’s thinking that I’ve just said something asinine, which may or may not be true.

And whatever was the state of his marriage, which ended soon after the filming of Star Wars for reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with me, I don’t think of Harrison in any way as a “womanizer.” I think he was lonely in England. We were all lonely in an upbeat beginning-of-our-public-lives way. I think. At least I was, and I’m making an educated guess about the others. None of us had ever starred in a movie before, and Harrison was the only one of an age where he could muster some perspective. We were on the Island of Location, and Location is the land of permission, where you can behave in ways that you would never behave in the real world.

There was Harrison and there was me. Both three months away from home. On location where you were free to do what neither of you would do when surrounded by your all-too-loving family and all-too-observant friends. Where everything and everyone around you was interesting and new. Where you have all sorts of new people now focused on you and how you are feeling. But not in the usual quasi-claustrophobic way. These were people who didn’t want anything from you except that you have your lines memorized, your costume on, and your hair and makeup smooth and neat—especially your hair. Mine anyway, which tended to get unpinned and stray out of the confines it needed to stay in. Even though you were running around and shooting guns, your hair absolutely could not be in disarray. One had to look all neat and tidy while involved in the aerobic activity of saving the galaxy.

For most of us, home is an environment that discourages you from fooling around of any kind. Not that any of us were necessarily inclined to act out on adulterous impulses. I look back and see us all being playfully physical with one another, enjoying that familial comfort that developed amongst us. Us being me and Mark, though my focus on what happened between Mark and myself diminished once things began with Mr. Ford. On some days I would self-consciously draw back from contact with him, while on others I would have fun frolicking through brightly lit hallways, touching an arm, ducking down my bun-encased head, or grazing a powdered forehead to his smuggler’s jacket, leaning over to look at some allegedly unremembered lines, falling into him, my smaller self to his larger one in a fit of suppressed laughter between takes. What’s that saying I’ve said before? And I’ll keep saying it until things can finally get unsaid? “Location, location, location.”

Kissing me in the car was the last time that Harrison would be able to labor under the relaxing assumption that I was your average, everyday sexually experienced would-be actress. Someone accustomed to drunkenly jumping into the backs of cars and later falling into bed. A brief and amazingly casual encounter with said would-be actress, looking to add to her currently very short, but, like many other humans, over the ensuing years increasingly longer, line of exciting unclothed experiences with attractive men.