“Men don’t have the same bodies these days,” Kitty said.
“I don’t get much chance to notice,” Estelle said. I was sitting with Kitty and Estelle at our favorite café, Les Raconteurs, in Charlestour. Kitty had wanted to see some of the countryside, and Estelle had come along.
“Imagine,” Kitty said as we settled down around our table on the terrasse, “here we are in a town of about five thousand people that has three bakeries and a confectioner’s shop, a fantastic fruit and vegetable store, a supermarket, two butchers, a fish store, at least three restaurants and five cafés, as far as I can make out, and probably lots of other things I haven’t seen. It’s remarkable.”
“Plus they have a big street market twice a week just in case you’re not happy with the selections in the stores,” I said.
Kitty said, “And the men look great. I love a country where there are still a lot of blue-collar men who have strong bodies from actually working physically. I don’t think anyone works physically anymore in the United States. You never have an electrician or refrigerator repairman drop in who is actually sexy.” And so the discussion started.
When Estelle mourned that she didn’t get to see men’s bodies anymore Kitty said, “I don’t mean that. Although it would be nice.”
“It’s true. Men did look different in our day.” Estelle nodded at Kitty.
“Our day, my dear?” Kitty said. “I could be your mother. How old are you?”
Estelle said, “Seventy. Now that I’m seventy I admit it. I wouldn’t discuss my age for years.”
“Seventy’s nothing. I’m ninety-four. And you know the sex stuff never goes away. Isn’t that depressing news, my darling?” She reached over and patted my knee. She was quite extraordinary. Tall, slim, lovely legs, great charisma. There was no feeling of being with an older person. As was true of Estelle, also.
“It encourages one to keep in fighting trim,” I said.
Kitty said, “I remember during the war all the young men who came through New York, wonderful in their uniforms, seemed to be so slim, slim, slim with broad shoulders and narrow waists. Not so tall as nowadays perhaps, but there was something there. They had profiles, too. And men used to cross their legs and smoke, like so.” She mimed it for us, one knee over the other knee.
“Now men seem to think it is effeminate to cross their legs like that. They will put one ankle on their knee . . .” she showed us, “. . . generally they don’t even do that. They like to sit with their legs apart like this. Like footballers on a bench waiting to play.” She demonstrated this pose, too. People at the next table were watching with great interest.
“‘Put me in, Coach, I’m hot.’ Do you remember that expression?” Estelle asked.
“I’m afraid I never heard it,” Kitty said.
“I’ve never heard it, but I’m going to start using it,” I said.
“And then they fell apart,” Estelle said. “There weren’t gyms. Men wouldn’t have gone to a gym anyway. Can you imagine William Powell going to a gym? With that moustache. I wanted to be Myrna Loy when I grew up. So sophisticated. The Thin Man and all that.”
“She was a lovely woman,” Kitty said. “Started out as a chorus girl. They used to get her up like an Oriental girl. They thought she looked Chinese. She certainly showed them. And what was that when William Powell planned to marry Jean Harlow just before she died? I wouldn’t have thought she was at all his type. She really was only playing herself, you know. She was heading toward getting fat. A blonde.”
Estelle said, “Hold it. I was a blonde.”
“Yes, but not that type, I’m sure. You’re the Lauren Bacall type. You must be something of the same age.”
“Betty claims to be younger than I am, but she’s not. Now she says she did her first movie when she was twenty or something like that. Get real.”
“You have a much younger vocabulary than I do, Estelle. It suits you,” Kitty said.
“So how are men now,” I said, “if they’re not as slim and dashing and well-tailored?”
“Now they seem to be boys. Back then, the boys all looked like men. Now the men all look like boys. You seem to be a boy, Hugo. You must be the same age as Lawrence Olivier was when he did Wuthering Heights,” Kitty said.
“Don’t depress me,” I said. “I feel I’m lucky to be doing The Red Mill under your eagle eye.”
“You are probably going to go far. But you’ll have to figure out the gay thing,” Kitty said.
“That’s what I told him,” Estelle said. “It’s a theater thing. Everyone wants to fall in love with the leading man. They don’t want to know that it’s out of the question.”
I said, “I certainly am not going to run that tired old line about being entitled to your privacy up the flagpole. Every man who does that might just as well have ‘fag’ stamped on his forehead.”
“My husband was interested in men, too,” Kitty said. “It’s a phenomenon. I really can’t imagine saying to someone, ‘Please don’t have exciting sexual experiences that have nothing to do with me just because I don’t want you to.’ Who has the right to do that? That’s like saying, ‘I don’t want you to play tennis because I don’t.’”
Estelle and I took a few moments to digest this. Kitty broke the silence. “Who were you married to, my dear?” she asked Estelle.
“I was never married to him, but I spent thirty years of my life trailing around after Punto Carretas. You may have heard of him. He sang with Xavier Cugat at one time. He played the guitar,” Estelle said.
“Did you love him?” Kitty asked.
“He was a man. And I always like that in a person,” Estelle said. “I wouldn’t say I love him anymore. He’s not dead. He’s in Philadelphia.”
“Practically the same thing,” Kitty said.
“You’re telling me,” Estelle said. “Didn’t W. C. Fields say, ‘I was in Philadelphia last weekend, but it was closed.’” They both laughed heartily. I’ve never been in Philadelphia.
“To get back to sex,” Estelle said, “Punto played around a lot but never with the boys. At one point I just decided what he does when he’s not around me I’m just going to ignore as long as he gives me the attention I want when he’s with me. I had to admit to myself I was satisfied with that. I was very busy. I was working a lot. I was out of town on tours or in rehearsals. If I said I missed him I would have been lying. I didn’t fool around myself because when I’m attached to someone I just don’t have those feelings. I kind of saw it as my not having the right to say he shouldn’t fool around or he’d lose me. Because I knew he couldn’t be any other way. And I’d lose him. And in truth my private life was fine. I had just one rule. Don’t tell me about it. We’re all adults here.”
They both turned to look at me. Kitty said, “So you see what lies ahead?”
“Yes,” Estelle said, “you make the rules and they’ll turn around and bite you in the ass. Usually the man you want is completely different from the man you have. You have to work with what you’ve got. And if you’re busy, it’s usually plenty.”
“Well, gals, you’ve given me a lot to think about,” I said. Our Fantas and Diet Cokes were drained. The little addition was on the edge of the table. I put some money on top of it.
“We haven’t even talked about being a gay man and having an acting career,” Estelle said.
“I feel I’m something like you, Estelle,” I said. “The love thing seems to me to be more fulfilling than the acting thing. I think I’d miss it a lot if I don’t really ever have it. The acting thing, I’m not so sure I’m going to go to bed sobbing in later years if it doesn’t happen.”
Kitty said, “It’s because you are so good-looking. I’m sure you feel you have some responsibility to share it with the world. It’s part of your talent. But you’re sharing it with the world just by being alive. And you don’t owe anything to the world. You’re here to live. And if Steve is it, go for it. Oh, look, I’m beginning to talk like Estelle! Anyway, I once fell in love with someone because they were in love with me, so you can always hope for that with Steve.”
“How lucky I am to know both of you,” I said and took their hands and kissed them, one to the left, one to the right.
“How French,” Kitty said.