Life Is Not a Stage by Florence Henderson (big screen ebook reader .TXT) 📕

the musician ended after several months. He didn’t want to leave his wife, and I didn’t want to risk losing my children. Ira found out about it, which I probably wanted him to do, and needless to say, he was very upset about it. I told him, “It’s not that I don’t love you. I will always love you. It was something I had to do.” I am sure there was a part of Ira that was equally frustrated, but whether or not he ever went outside the marriage, I don’t know. I never asked him. After the initial trauma subsided, the matter seemed to fade into the woodwork on his part. There were attempts to heal the rift. We tried. He tried. I even delicately bought a few books to try to spice things up.

I would like to be able to make it a nice and tidy story and say that when the affair was over it was also the end of my infidelity. But that was not to be the case. None of the affairs were really meaningful and all were short-lived. I guess I had to give it a little more research to be able to say with conviction that sex for the sake of sex did not prove very satisfying for me. One of the incidents in particular demonstrated convincingly that it wasn’t the kind of life I wanted.

PARENTAL ADVISORY: To my son or anybody else potentially allergic to TMI (too much information), please stop here and skip over these next few pages. I will indicate with a row of asterisks when it is safe to resume reading.

I had alluded earlier that the much-ballyhooed kiss from John Lindsay at the premiere party for my nightclub act was just a prelude. What I am about to share is the kind of fodder for the tabloid press that I truly wanted to avoid in this book. I can hear and see it now as I go out to do interviews after its publication. I’m on a network morning show. The host says to me, “Florence, I really enjoyed your book. What a great life and wonderful insights you share, blah, blah, blah…But I can’t stop thinking about your one-night stand with the late former New York City mayor John Lindsay. Please tell us more about it!” Sixty seconds later, the host says that they’re sorry they don’t have more time to talk about the rest of the book, about the deeper meaning of life and the profound secrets of happiness I reveal, but how they loved that juicy John Lindsay story!

At the end of the day, I decided to relax my principles and let this story skip by my internal censor despite the future consequences I have just described. One reason is that it is a good cautionary tale for all and a poignant reminder to listen to that little voice called the intuition. When it says, “No, this isn’t the right thing for you to be doing right now,” please know that it is usually not blowing smoke. Take heed or that Old Testament form of instant karma will get you, sooner more often than later. In my case, divine providence did not dawdle.

The other reason for sharing it is that I’m still pissed off at him and myself! It may have been over forty years ago, but it seems like yesterday. This story still makes me cringe, so I’ll get right to the point and spare you any unnecessary details.

John and his family were casual friends of ours, and throughout his political life I had made a number of appearances for him at benefits and some campaign events. I was out in Los Angeles, and it so happened that he was as well. He called me and invited me to come along with him to a get-together at the home of movie producer Dan Melnick (who had been married to Richard Rodgers’s daughter). I accepted. After the party, he invited me back to the Beverly Hills Hotel for a drink, just down the street from the rented house on Rodeo Drive where the kids and I were staying at the time.

From here the story gets blurry and crazy. There was no tremendous sexual attraction from my point of view. I didn’t believe in one-night stands and frankly detested the very thought. But he was extremely persuasive. I was lonely. I knew it wasn’t the right thing to do. So, what did I do? I did it. I went home later that night.

I woke up the next morning. Something didn’t feel right. I pulled off the sheets and looked down my pajama bottoms, and saw that something didn’t look right either. What in the hell is this? What are these little things? Terrified, I rushed into the bathroom. I looked at myself in the mirror. Oh my God, one of the little black things I saw below was crawling on my eyelid! I had no idea what they were, but then suddenly it hit me. I remembered my brothers who had been in the Navy talked about guys going to prostitutes and coming back with the crabs. Oh my God! To this day, I’ve never thoroughly researched crabs. Where in the hell do they come from?!

I got up the courage to call my physician, Dr. Giorgi, and she told me what to go out and buy. I was leaving the next day to go up to San Francisco to open a nightclub engagement at the Fairmont Hotel. When I arrived, there were flowers from John Lindsay and a note of apology. Guess I learned the hard way that crabs do not discriminate but cross over all socioeconomic strata. He must have had quite the active life. What a way to put the kibosh on a relationship.

As promised, here are the asterisks.

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My philandering days were over not so long after they started. I hated that life. I decided to give it one more try to salvage my marriage