The Princess Diarist(10)

carrison

I’ve spent so many years not telling the story of Harrison and me having an affair on the first Star Wars movie that it’s difficult to know exactly how to tell it now. I suppose I’m writing this because it’s forty years later and whoever we were then—superficially at least—we no longer are now. Whoever I might’ve infuriated then wouldn’t have the energy to be infuriated now. And even if they did, I wouldn’t have the energy to feel as guilty as I would have thirty or twenty or—well, there’s no way I could’ve written it even ten years ago.

There’s not much in my life that I’ve kept secret. Many would argue there are certain otherwise-private stories I might’ve been wiser to keep closer to the vest. That vest that knows no proximity.

But Carrison is something I’ve only vaguely alluded to in the past forty years. Why? Why not blather on about this like I’ve blathered on about everything else? Was it the one thing I wanted to know all by myself—well, me and Harrison? I can only speculate. Anyway there are rules about kissing and telling, aren’t there? I’d like to think those only apply to men. And Harrison’s been very good about not talking about his half of the story. But just because he’s been good doesn’t mean that I have to continue to be. Mum is the word for just so long and then it has to go back to being a British parent.

Of course, I didn’t feel truly comfortable telling the story before now—and still don’t, and probably still won’t at whatever point in the future that you’re actually reading this—not only because I’m not necessarily a comfortable person in general, but because Harrison was married at the time, and also because really, why would you tell other people about something like that unless you were one of those people who tell everybody everything, not caring about how a particular revelation might affect anyone else who appears in the story?

Not that I’ve ever done a single thing that might encourage people to consider me anything remotely like the soul of discretion. It’s true that I do tell a lot. Indeed, I have the well-deserved reputation of divulging conspicuously more information that would ordinarily fall on the intimate side. But, though I do admittedly lay bare far more than the average bear, before disclosing anything that is possibly someone else’s secret to tell, I make it a practice to first let that person know about my intention. (Aren’t I ethical? I thought you’d think so.)

They’re free to persuade me to alter what I’ve written to reflect their (obviously gutless) recollection of the experience, or be even more wimpy and ask me to remove them from the story altogether, in light of their concerns that their reputations and/or lives might be forever destroyed. I don’t want to make anyone else look stupid. That’s a privilege I reserve for myself.

Because, with the exception of fucking with the truth about whether or not I was loaded at any given moment or if I stole painkillers from your medicine cabinet, I’m no liar. I need you to trust that or stop reading. Recollections might differ with regard to the smaller details, but I don’t think my perceptions are distorted. No one has ever said to me, “That never happened,” or “I don’t remember the evening that way at all. There were no pygmies in our group that night.” I mean, if I have even a teensy doubt about something’s having happened, then I don’t tell the story. Not worth it.

Bottom line, not only am I not a liar, I’m not even an exaggerator. If anything, I like to dial things down a bit so everything doesn’t come off as a drag queen line dance at Mardi Gras.

Do I at times wish I’d had a calmer, wiser, and more manageable sort of existence? One that even at times included pauses and yawning? Absolutely. But then who would I be? More than likely not someone who, at nineteen, found herself having an affair with her fourteen-years-older married costar without first ever having had with him a linear, meaningful conversation while clothed.

Also, if I didn’t write about it someone else would. Someone without direct knowledge of the “situation.” Someone who would wait—cowardly—until after my passing to speculate on what happened and make me look bad. No.

Though no one seems to have any idea that our affair occurred, or even may have occurred, forty years later, here’s the truth, the banal, romantic, sweet, awkward truth. The truth that is Carrison.

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i began filming Star Wars hoping to have an affair. Hoping to strike people as somewhere between sophisticated and louche—someone you’d think had gone to boarding school in Switzerland with Anjelica Huston and had learned to speak four languages, including Portuguese. An affair for a person like that would be a completely predictable and totally adult experience.

This would be my first affair—not surprising, when you think about it, for a nineteen-year-old female in the seventies—and I didn’t really know what someone actually needed to do in order to make a thing like that happen. Back then I was always looking ahead to who I wanted to be versus who I didn’t realize I already was, and the wished-for me was most likely based on who other people seemed to be and the desire to have the same effect on others that they had had on me.

I knew I was going to be awful with men, partly because of the way my mom had been, with her two divorces and one separation in the pipeline. I possessed that certainty by fifteen or sixteen, and so I needed to prove it to you. Sure, the insight wasn’t a comfortable one, but it was mine, and I was still young enough to be considered precocious. Wow! I was clairvoyant! Maybe I couldn’t fix it, or alter it even a little, but what the hell! I knew what was coming and didn’t bother with feeling sorry for my not-too-distant-future self—it might not be great, but I predicted it, named it, claimed it, and tried to project the illusion that I was up to my elbows in control.