Her life intersected with some other women we have covered here including the Valtesse de la Bigne, who faked a noble heritage and ended up rich, in April 2018, and American lesbian in Paris, Natalie Clifford Barney, in September 2014.
She was a Courtesan who chose as an adult to start at the middle and made it to the top. But was she happy?
DO YOU LOVE MORE THAN ONE PERSON IN A ROMANTIC WAY?
Do you feel pressure to leave one of them?
QUESTION FOR MISSY
Dear Missy,
I'm an attractive woman but my boyfriend is an exceptionally attractive man. He even modeled for a while. He is perfect in every way. Over the last year or so, before Covid, we would go out to restaurants and theater here in New York City, which we both enjoy. I realized that a lot of the men who come up to us to say hello are gay. What worries me is his bromance with one particular man. I read around this and bromances are when two men bond as brothers of different mothers, something like that.
He and Dirk talk on the phone every day. They have known each other for years. So I'm the newer person in this triangle. Even when Teddy goes on vacations or out of town on business they talk on the phone every day. Sometimes when we are out dining, Teddy calls and Dirk talks to him in front of me at the table. I protested and Teddy tells me I'm too sensitive about all this.
I'm worried that Teddy is not being honest with me about his sexuality and that there is more going on with Dirk.
What would you do?
Helena
ANSWER FROM MISSY
Hello Helena,
I have always believed in and had platonic friendships, some of quite long duration, and I'm sure people can have friendships that are not sexual and that do not interfere with their primary relationship(s).
I'm also big on trusting your instincts though I know I have talked myself out of what I "knew" in the past.
So let's look at this without looking at the possibility that Teddy and Dirk are lovers.
It is rude for anyone to be taking calls while out dining with anyone. You should expect Teddy's full attention while dining out. Sure, if people come over to say hello or you invite them to have a dinner with you, that's different. That is about socializing, about etiquette. Some people think they're impressing you about how important they are by making and taking calls while dining. They are mostly impressed with themselves. So tell him you dislike it when he takes and makes calls while dining out because you look forward to these dinners as time for just the two of you.
I also suspect that Teddy is emotionally involved with Dirk. It's one thing to admire and be mutually supportive of a friend or a family member and another to prioritize over a woman you're really interested in. So I feel that be it Dirk or a lack of interest in you or just plain rudeness, Teddy just might be that fish that needs to be let off hook and thrown back into the sea.
It's just not safe for us, for our health, to be sexual with someone who may also be sexual with others, so many women today request tests for SDI's just in case, each and every time they have their check ups. You should do this. You might be able to get a conversation started with Teddy about sexuality by mentioning to him that you are doing this and ask him how often he gets tested. You don't say how your sex life is. Is he pleasing you? Is he with you in that moment? If not, let him go.
Remember it's not easy to be available when you yourself are all tied up.
Missy
ALL POETRY COM : THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY by GEORGE SMITH PATTON
Just one stanza :
So as through a glass and darklyWesterners who were raised in Christianity are told that there is one chance for eternal life and it's this life. Millions of Westerners, including some who consider themselves to be Christian, have decided that reincarnation - many lives - makes more sense. Many religions in the past and present do believe in reincarnation and also Karma - the idea that you reap what you sow. Many people believe that when they bring special talents, skills, or an expertise into this life it's because of their past life accomplishments. It's not easy to reconcile a special talent for war with spirituality for me, but General George Smith Patton believed he himself was reincarnated as a military strategist ... a genius at war.
A scene from the well regarded 1970 film, Patton, in which Patton reveals he remembers a battlefield and a past life...
EVOLS LIBRARY MANOA HAWAII EDU : BEATRICE PATTON'S HAWAII by Nancy J. Morris
This sixteen page paper, part of a longer one, is in a pdf file. And according to it, yes, Beatrice Ayers Patton, General George Patton's wife, loved Hawaii and in the years they were stationed there, 1925-1928 and 1935-1937, she learned much about the culture.
The couple lived a life of luxury in Hawaii, on base during the week, in smart hotels on the weekends. The men played Polo. They sailed, They partied with celebrities'. However, something in Beatrice made her most interested in the native culture, the pre-missionary Pan-Polynesian society, Hearing the old stories of the goddess Pele, ghosts, and so on, she wrote them down and began a serious study of the history and religion of the ancients which she would later use when she wrote books and became a published author.
EXCERPT: (page 80) Beatrice's collection of tales grew. Apueo, the Hawaiian owl said to be a messenger of death, flew into a Queens's Hospital ward. None of the patients were on the critical list, but in the morning, seven of the eleven Hawaiian patients were found unexplainably dead. The black magic arts of the kahuna, according some credence be a plantation doctor acquaintance of the Patton's, especially seized Beatrice's imagination. The doctor told Beatrice that at least six of his patients had been prayed to death.....
(Beatrice began to write poetry, short stories, and a novel, interwoven with Hawaiian themes. Love without End was partially autobiographical.)
Beatrice was given a secret Hawaiian name and came to believe in the power of the Hawaiian gods. In her books she includes the art of black magic and a chant used by Hawaiian sorcerers to pray their enemies to death "MAY THE GREAT WORM GNAW YOUR VITALS AND MAY YOUR BONES ROT, JOINT BY LITTLE JOINT."
Was this the curse she may have used on Jean Gordon?
EXCERPT (page 85-86)
When Beatrice's niece, Jean Gordon, visited (Hawaii), Patton began a flirtation with the girl. Gordon was a recent Boston debutante, pretty, lively, and the best friend of Ruth Ellen, the Patton's daughter. Unwisely Beatrice did not accompany Patton and Jean on a horse buying trip to a neighbor island, and when the two returned, it was clear to Beatrice that the flirtation had become an affair. Beatrice forgave Patton, and the marriage survived.
