Pat Buckley didn’t stay long. She was dating Mackenzie Phillips at the time and stayed only three weeks before taking off to Cannes or Rio or someplace. Looking back on it, I can’t put all the blame on Pat Buckley. Mike and I had problems before she came along, big problems we would have been forced to deal with sooner or later. I don’t want to go into any of the details of our relationship, but I would like to set the record straight and say that there is no truth to the rumors about me and Morley Safer. I resent Mike’s accusation that Morley and I are anything more than friends.

I resent Mike Tyson’s self-pitying ploys for attention. I resent his suggestion that I was in any way false or insincere. Unlike him, I don’t care to dwell on the unpleasant aspects of our relationship. I prefer to remember a time when Mike and I, having finished a simple game of cards, were sitting side by side in comfortable reclining chairs. Mike took my hand in his and began, very gently, to pet my fingers, kissing each one, and addressing them as individuals.

Barrel Fever

MUSIC FOR LOVERS

ANITA O’DAY was recently interviewed on the radio, on one of the stations I am fond of. She was hooked on drugs for years but claims to have kicked the habit. She told the interviewer that she had taken drugs because she had felt like taking drugs. Then, when she no longer felt like it, she went off to Hawaii, where she was a stranger to drug salesmen. She sounded drunk to me. She said, “My name’s O’Day and that’s pig latin for money, honey, and plenty of it.” She must have been drunk to ramble on like that. She claimed that her record company is managed and financed by her dog. Drunk.

It turns out that Anita O’Day is missing her uvula, that sack of flesh that hangs from the rear of most everyone’s palate. Hers was accidentally removed during a childhood tonsillectomy. She was young then and has adjusted, made quite a name for herself.

I’ve heard Anita O’Day sing plenty of times before but was very excited when, at the end of the interview, the station played a few of her songs. It sounded completely new to me, knowing that she was missing her uvula. Apparently, along with the appendix and tonsils, the uvula is one of those things that we can do without. Since the interview, I cannot get it out of my mind, the idea of this extra baggage. It makes me gag, but still I find myself constantly poking at my uvula with whatever is handy. It’s funny. I just want to take a pair of scissors and snip the damned thing off. It would bleed like the devil but it wouldn’t kill me.