An Actor's Life for Me

Maggie laughed, and in giving her reasons, I learned something of her
life prior to my meeting her.

We were in bed together, and she said, "Darling, in our sort of
business and especially my job of selling, the clients expect it. They
want something exotic, so I try to give it to them. I learned two
important things right at the start of my working life."

"I got a clerical job with a television station as soon as I left high
school. The first thing I learned was, they were very pretentious, and
if you wanted to make your way in that business, you had to go along
with their arty-crafty ways."

"They wanted their employees, especially the women, to look a bit arty
and exotic. So I dressed and made up to meld in with their
requirements.

The second thing I learned was, giving sexual favours to climb the
promotional ladder can end up counter productive. I admit I tried it,
but I soon found that if a station executive promised you a higher
position if you'd open your legs for him, that higher position often
didn't come my way after the 'night of love'. It's better to let them
think you'll give it to them. As long as they live in hope, you have
some control over the situation."

"I did quite well at the television station – ended up in sales
selling advertising time. Got to know a lot of people and learned how
to give the public what it wants, or at least, what it thinks it
wants. So that's why the awful clothes and the glaring makeup."

When she had mentioned using sex to gain promotion, I had felt a stab
of pain shoot through my stomach. To my surprise, I was jealous. I
began weakly, "Maggie, about the sex…you wouldn't…I mean…"

"No, I damned well wouldn't," she snapped. "I told you I learned that
lesson. And as you seem concerned, there's no one else."

I had put my big foot in it, and had to work a bit harder at the love
making that night to placate her.

I had hugged my fading hopes of becoming a great star close to my
chest, but the growing intimacy with Maggie invited confidences, so
when for the tenth time she asked me why I had accepted such a boring,
underpaid job, I told her.

" Wanted to be an actor, but it's so hard to get in, and I needed
money."

"Darling," she burst out, "Why didn't you tell me before, you silly
boy? I know people who can help. Would you leave it to me?"

"Well, yes, if you can do something…"

"Of course I can. I'm really rather cross with you for not telling me
before. I think I shall have to punish you."

She pretended to think for a moment then; "I shall make you give me
lots of oral sex tonight."

"Some punishment," I thought, and went straight at it.

Now began a round of attendance at plays, concerts, musicals and
visits to television stations. I shook innumerable hands and wondered
at the many men that Maggie had dangling "in hope." The outcome was an
audition for a part in a television soap.

Maggie tried to reassure me just prior to the audition.

"Darling, you don't have to be able to act. All they want are pretty
young people who can relax and be themselves in front of a camera.
You're pretty and I make sure you are always kept relaxed, so that
only leaves it for you to be yourself."

I was not sure I liked this low estimation of my thespian
capabilities, but as I got the role, I left it at that, especially
when they told me the salary.

That night I had a warning from Maggie:

"Ray, you are going to be involved with a pretentious arty world of
illusion. You are going to meet a lot of very pretty girls, and there
will be empty headed female soap addicts writing to you and
telephoning you, with all sorts of propositions. There will be all
sorts of temptations, especially sexual ones. If you decide to give in
to them, don't expect me to stay around."

She was right about the temptations. Once started in the awful soap
called, "Neighbourhood Lust," I could have bedded twenty different
girls each day ranging in age from fifteen to fifty. I got letters
that almost burnt a hole in the table, that gave me ages, vital
statistics, photographs and descriptions of what I could do to them –
or they to me.

The television station showing the soap was always on the look out for
some publicity gimmick, and so magazines carried stories about me,
suggesting this or that romantic involvement. One magazine went so far
as to claim it could hear wedding bells. I was supposed to be marrying
one of the girls in the show!

While all this was going on, Maggie and Buggs decided that they had
got all they could out of The House of Marguerite, so the business was
terminated.

Maggie came out with a nice profit, and proceeded to engage in a
variety of businesses that came and went, such as cookware, makeup for
the mature woman, fashions for the well-endowed older lady.

Her little enterprises came and went with such rapidity I could hardly
keep up with them, but Maggie always seemed to know just the right
time to start something and when to get out. When she did get out it
was always at a substantial profit. I suspect it was tip offs from her
"hopeful" men that put her on the right track.

The soap actor has a shelf life of about two years. At that point, he
or she is usually phased out of the serial. Unfortunately their face
has become so well-known as a particular character, it is rarely
possible to appear in another soap. Also, it is then that you
discover, as Maggie had said, that you are not really an actor. What
was I to do?

I was at the point of mulling over my future, when Maggie dropped her
bombshell.

It was one Sunday morning at breakfast when Maggie rocked me.
Uncharacteristically she looked down at her plate and said, "Ray, I
have to tell you something."

My stomach jolted. She was finishing with me – but how could that be
when we had made such passionate love last night?

"I've done something very wicked, Ray."

"She's having it off with another guy."

"I've deceived you, Ray."

"It is another guy, I'll kill him, I'll kill them both."

"I don't know how to tell you, darling."

"'Darling'? Why darling if she's off with another bloke?"

She was still staring at her plate, and impatiently I broke out,
"Maggie, for God's sake, just tell me what it is and get it over
with."

"Darling, six months ago I stopped taking the pill, and I'm going to
have a baby."

She looked up at me quickly, then returned to staring at her plate,
her head bent as if waiting for the storm.

"If she stopped taking the pill she must have known she might get
pregnant, so she must have wanted to get pregnant."

I puzzled this thought for a minute, now doing my share of plate
staring.

"Maggie, you do want the baby, don't you?"

That brought her head up. "Of course I want the baby, idiot, why do
you think I stopped taking the pill?"

"Why didn't you tell me you'd stopped?"

"Because I thought you would object…you might start using a condom or
stop having sex with me or leave me."

"Is she crying? No, impossible! Maggie never cries…My God, she is
crying."

I bounded round the table to her, kneeling beside her.

"Don't cry Maggie. If you want the baby, you should be happy."

"Do you want it?"

"Of course I want it, its mine, isn't it?"

"Raymond," (whenever she used my full name I knew I was in serious
trouble) "You bastard, you rotten bastard. If that's what you think of
me, you can…"

"Maggie, Maggie darling, it was a rhetorical question. All I meant
was, of course I want it because it's mine…ours."

"Oh." (Long pause) "You do want it then?"

"I've just said so."

"Why do you want it?"

I couldn't understand where she was heading with her "why" question,
but I tried to answer.

"I told you before, I want it because it's ours."

"What about me?"

This was a Maggie I had never known before. What had happened to the
in-charge lady, the direct speech woman? I felt desperate.

"Maggie…darling…what is it you want me to say?"

"I can't tell you because if I do you might say it because you know I
want you to say it."

"Maggie, I love you very much, but if you don't…"

"That's it!"

"What's it?"

"What you just said, that's what I couldn't ask you to say."

"What?"

"I love you very much."

"Ah."

"If I'd asked you to say you loved me then you'd not be able to say it
voluntarily, of your own free will, but you did. By the way, I love
you very much too."

"Oh."

"Ray!"

"Yes?"

"Will you marry me?"

"What!"

"Will you…"

"It's all right, I heard."

"Well?"

"Er…yes."

"Oh good, darling. It would have been so embarrassing if you'd said
'no'. You see, I've already started the preliminary arrangements."

"You what?"

"Take me to bed, darling."

We headed for the bedroom, and as we went:

"Oh, darling, seeing that you're sort of unemployed, I've heard about
a very nice little business opportunity, and if we became business
partners we could…"

"Oh my God, Madame's back in charge again…"