In fact I am superior to the original Miss Golden Dreams. She was just a frightened girl, her (flat, perfect) stomach growling from hunger. Those shadowy parts of my brain that once preserved troublesome memories have been (mostly) excised. My teeth are certainly in better condition—whiter, more even, and cavity-free—than they were in 1949. A heated red liquid is circulating in my veins and arteries, serving double duty as one-third more efficient in carrying oxygen to my brain than my old anemic blood—and it’s an aphrodisiac, an added bonus.

Good thing you’ve brought your checkbook, Daddy.

How’d you like to own me, Daddy? Take me home with you? Love me?

Daddy, I know I could love you.

All you’ve got to do, Daddy, is make a bid for Miss Golden Dreams. And keep bidding. Keep upping the ante. Up—up—up, until your rivals fall behind, panting and defeated.

Lowest acceptable purchase price for Miss Golden Dreams today is twenty-two million. Highest—hey, there is no highest.

In fact, it’s predicted that we will set a Sotheby’s record this very day—you, the most elite of Marilyn collectors, and me, Marilyn.

Yes, Miss Golden Dreams is the original Marilyn nude. The nude. The one you saw as a boy and never forgot. The one that rendered all the girls, at least the girls you knew and the women you would come to know, irrelevant.

So young! (Practically as young as your granddaughter, but don’t think that.)

Fun fact: I was paid fifty dollars to pose for this photo.

Fun fact: I wasn’t “Marilyn Monroe” yet—the studio hadn’t named me. I was Norma Jeane Baker.

Fun fact: already I’d been abandoned by a husband, divorced.

Fun fact: occupation starlet, but—already—dropped by my studio.

Gaze greedily upon Norma Jeane as she was in 1949—more than seven decades ago. That was an era of female beauty like none before or since, and Miss Golden Dreams is the most desirable of them all—the “icon” beside which all other females fall short.

Flawless nude on red velvet. Soft, sinuous velvet, like the red interior of a heart. Creamy-white baby-soft skin, flawless skin, bright red lipstick smile revealing small, perfect white teeth, blond hair tumbling past (bare white) shoulders.

Pinnacle of human evolution—a female infinitely desirable, yet unthreatening. An infant, yet a sexualized infant. Sweet-smiling, dimpled cheek, sparkly eyes gazing coyly at you as a little girl would do, partly hiding her face. (For this is Daddy’s girl, but a naughty Daddy’s girl.)