Brando_ Songs My Mother Taught Me - Marlon Brando [128]
After that, I always wanted several women in my life at the same time as an emotional insurance policy to protect myself from being hurt again. Because I didn’t want to be hurt again, I found it difficult to love and to trust. So, like a vaudeville juggler spinning a half-dozen plates at once, I always tried to keep several romances going at the same time; that way, if one woman left me there would still be four or five others.
I enjoyed the women’s company, but a someone named Harvey was always standing in the corner, an invisible rabbit called a relationship. All but a few women wanted me to promise that their love would be returned in equal measure, and that it would be forever and undying. Sometimes I told them what they wanted to hear, but I have always thought that the concepts of monogamy, fidelity and everlasting love were contrary to man’s fundamental nature. Sure, adolescent, childish myths tell us what love ought to be, and so do the songs we sing; they all proclaim one way or another: I love you … you love me … we’re going to love each other forever … I’m going to love you till I die and after I die I’m still going to love you, until you die and we’re together again in heaven. The songs are part of our cultural mythology, promulgating values that collide with our fundamental nature, which is the product of billions of years of evolution.
I don’t think I was constructed to be monogamous. I don’t think it’s the nature of any man to be monogamous. Chimps, our closest relatives, are not monogamous; neither are gorillas or baboons. Human nature is no more monogamous than theirs. In every human culture men are propelled by genetically ordained impulses over which they have no control to distribute their seed into as many females as possible. Sex is the primal force of our and every other species. Our strongest urge of all is to replicate our genes and perpetuate our species. We are helpless against it, and are programmed to do as we do. There may be variations from culture to culture, but whether it is in Margaret Mead’s Samoa or modern Manhattan, our genetic composition makes our sexual behavior irresistible.
Although I let some women believe I loved them—and in some cases I may have meant it at the time—there was one woman I loved more than any other.
I was in my early forties when I met Weonna in Rome. She had a part in Candy and was with a friend of mine. He and I had the same rivalry I’d had with Carlo Fiore; we both tried to seduce each other’s girl. After he introduced me to Weonna in a hotel lobby, he went off and I put it to her succinctly.
“Why don’t we go upstairs and fuck?” She answered, “Why not? Let’s go!”
That was the beginning and the end of the seduction.
Weonna was born only about a hundred miles from my birthplace. She had written a little, done some acting, modeled for a while, made some money in real estate. She was an extraordinary piece of construction, with white skin, soft, natural blond hair, freckles, a lot of moles, green eyes, and a voice with the slightest hint of an Irish accent, a hand-me-down from her mother, who was from Ireland. She made me laugh harder than any woman I’ve ever known. She was quick to understand and laughed at me a lot, too. Like my mother and grandmother, she had a sense of the absurd, thought the outrageous and imposed no limits on her imagination. She was amusing, witty, intelligent, eccentric. But she was also troubled. She distrusted people, drank too much and occasionally used drugs—not hard drugs, but pills. It was spasmodic; she would use them awhile, then swear off them, be clean for a while, then start again, and I’d have to take her to a hospital because it was the only place where she could stop. Still, we had a lot of fun together, and even now I often laugh at what we laughed at then.
One night I took Weonna on a mission to steal a stack of pipe, and before the night