I had a short chat with BBC Radio concerning the actor Jack Nicholson, whom I knew slightly during the 70s and 80s. Alas, it had to do with age, his and mine, 77 and 78 respectively. No, the man on the other side of the telephone did not ask me anything embarrassing. All he wanted to know was: Do women still come on to an oldie, or are they, as Jack Nicholson claims, a thing of the past?
Well, for starters, I do not believe that Nicholson is telling the truth, that he’s now alone and fears he will die alone because women have abandoned a sinking ship. He has a sense of decorum, and knows how ridiculous a man our age sounds when talking about women, especially younger women, something Jack and Taki have in common. Jack Nicholson has been chasing beautiful women all his life and will continue to do so up to the moment the man in the white suit pays him a visit. And that goes for me also, except that his fame and celebrity status give him an unfair advantage over the poor little unknown Greek boy.
Never mind. I was born behind the eight ball, so I’ll take it like a man, a man whose four great loves were unrequited—Ava Gardner, Betty Grable, Cyd Charisse, and Ginger Rogers. In fact, it was worse than that. They never knew of my existence, except for a brief intro in Spain to Ava, who asked me if I was gay when I told her I was a tennis player and not in the bullfight business. That was in 1957, and later that year I had a chance with Ginger, and also blew it. Then, years later, I went swimming with Cyd off the Cap d’Antibes, came on too strong—having just met her—and was told to drop dead. Drown, rather. Betty, I never met. This is the story of my miserable life, and the title of my autobiography is Le Misérable.
What I could have told the BBC interviewer is that Jack Nicholson should consider himself lucky he never seduced Feng Lung, the lady in central China who found her husband had used her mobile to send compromising messages to his girlfriend. She chopped off his penis, and, once the poor man got it reattached by medics, sneaked into his hospital bed, chopped it off again, and threw it out the window, where a stray animal disappeared with it. Ouch!
