Republished Third Chapter of “The French Courtesan, who came in from the cold.”

It was a night of very intense emotions and mental dilemma that I will never forget. In this chapter, you will learn about the horrific way that the entertainment industry and politically powerful men treated pretty young women in the Twentieth Century. After we left the party, we first went out into the falling snow then to the private guest quarters. During that roughly two hour period, Vivi confessed virtually everything she had done in her life that she was ashamed of, while periodically also begging me to come back to the Willard Hotel with her. I picked up on something that kept me in her company, despite her being biblically, “an unclean woman.” Vivi had never intentionally hurt anybody. Her heart was pure as gold.

There was another surprise. Vivi said that she had been so abused by powerful men that she thought herself now incapable of loving or even enjoying intimacy. Yet . . . she had been instantly attracted to me, a stranger. She didn’t know why.

A little later, we were in the guest quarters and she told me that she knew nothing about Georgia. She wanted to see what the land where I grew up looked like. The guest quarters had a large collection of National Geographic videos, plus a VCR tape player. I picked out, “The Realm of the Alligator” about the Okefenokee Swamp, where I was born and another about the Appalachian Mountains, where I had spent most of my adulthood. “The Realm of the Alligator” starred Pernell Roberts, Adam Cartwright on the TV series, “Bonanza.” Like me, he was born in Waycross, GA in the same hospital and went to the same church, our family did.

As soon as “The Realm of the Alligator” started, Vivi shouted “Bonanza! He was my first lover.” She explained that the French version of Bonanza was popular, when she was a teenager. She had a crush on Adam Cartwright and imagined at night that Pernell Roberts was in her bed beside her. She then realized that I talked like . . . and even looked somewhat like . . . Pernell. I told her that I knew the Roberts family well and that his father had intentionally dropped me headfirst on a concrete floor, when I was six months old.

This is the longest chapter in the book, but it has many, many more surprises.

The French Courtesan, Who Came In from the Cold . . . Chapter Three